Lecture 6: The Principle of Equivalence

Description: Introduction to the principle of equivalence: freely falling frames to generalize the inertial frames of special relativity. Two important variants of the equivalence principle (EP): The weak EP (one cannot distinguish free fall under gravity from uniform acceleration over “sufficiently small” regions); the Einstein EP (the laws of physics in freely falling frames are identical to those of special relativity over “sufficiently small” regions).

Instructor: Prof. Scott Hughes