Richard Kadel of Lawrence Berkeley labs says in Physics Today: "Since my undergraduate days, I have been puzzled by the fact that we have Newton's laws of motion but only Einstein's theory of special relativity... It's time to rename it as more than just a theory.
I propose that we, as physicists, define a set of Einstein's laws, just as we have Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, or Faraday's law."
To paraphrase, the laws he proposes are:
- Einstein's First Law. The laws of physics are the same for all observers no matter what their velocity is, as long as they are not accelerating.
- Einstein's Second Law. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers.
- Einstein's Third Law. The total energy of a body with momentum p and mass m is (m2c4 + p2c2)1/2.
- Einstein's Fourth Law. No observer can tell the difference between acceleration and the force of gravity based on local measurements.
You can read a little more in this Sci-Am blog posting.
What do we, as engineers, say?
Jorrie