Jay Orear, in his introductory physics text,1 defined the weight of a person as the reading one gets when standing on a (properly calibrated) bathroom scale. Here we will use Jay's definition of weight in a thought experiment to measure the weight of a photon. The thought experiment uses the results of the Pound‐Rebka‐Snider2,3 experiments, Compton scattering experiments, and the Eötvös experiments.
REFERENCES
1.
Jay Orear, Physics (Wiley, New York, 1961.)
2.
R. V.
Pound
and G. A.
Rebka
Jr., Phys. Review Letters
3
(9
), 439
–441
(Nov. 1959
).3.
R. V.
Pound
and J. L.
Snider
, Phys. Review Letters
13
(18
), 539
–540
(Nov. 1964
).4.
For a related discussion of weight caused by momentum transfer, see the analysis of the weight of an hourglass in
Ian H.
Redmount
and Richard H.
Price
, “The weight of time
,” Phys. Teach.
36
, 432
‐434
(Oct. 1998
).5.
6.
P. G.
Roll
, R.
Krotkov
, and R. H.
Dicke
, “The equivalence of inertial and passive gravitational mass
,” Ann. Phys.
26
(3
), 442
–517
(1964
).7.
Charles W.
Misner
and Peter
Putnam
, “Active gravitational mass
,” Phys. Rev.
116
(4
), 1045
–1046
(Nov. 1959
).
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