space & time

Explorations of multidimensional space and time with linear and angular motion.

Direction and units of magnitude

I want to clarify the statement in the previous post that “the three dimensions of direction are the same for space and time”. I have made the point that vectors in physics have various units of magnitude but direction is the same for all of them. That is accurate in the sense that directionality is

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Six-dimensional spacetime

First consider the dual to Minkowski spacetime. Recall that the invariant interval of Minkowski spacetime has one dimension of time with three dimensions of space: (ds)² = (c dt)² – (dx1)² – (dx2)² – (dx3)² = (c dt)² – (dr)² where t is the time coordinate and x1, x2, and x3 are space coordinates of

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Geometric vectors in physics

The concept of a vector in physics is similar to that of mathematics: a geometric object with both magnitude and direction. The magnitude is in units that may be any physical units. The direction is in angular units such as radians or degrees. These are called geometric vectors (also known as Euclidian vectors). Note that

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Speeds and velocities

A common word-problem in arithmetic goes something like this: If someone takes a road trip and for half of the time they go one speed and for the other half they go another speed, how should their average speed be determined? The answer is that the average speed is the arithmetic mean of the two

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Direction and dimension

What does it mean to say that space has three dimensions? It means that space has directions that have three dimensions, that is, three degrees of freedom. The dimensions are the directions in the space. It’s not that there are some dimensions that are spatial and others are something else but that space is characterized

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No change in time per length

Speed can be zero, that is, the change in spatial position per unit of duration can be zero. Can the change in temporal position per unit of length be zero, too? Let’s see. First, the denominator cannot be zero. We cannot simply invert a zero speed because that would lead to a zero denominator, which

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The flow of time and space

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.” Time flows, and keeps flowing day and night, whether anything

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