frames of reference
rallain | April 9, 2010So, I complained about MythBuster's explanation of relative velocity. How would I explain this? I would start by saying that velocity is relative. Here is the definition for velocity:
I put the "avg" in there because it is more true. If the acceleration is zero, I could drop this. For the rest of this post, I am going to assume zero acceleration. Ok. But what is the r vector? It is simply a vector from the origin to the object. Here is a picture.
Simple, right? And so the velocity tells how this vector r changes. But wait. Who says that I used the correct origin? How do you…