Space and Time: Inertial Frames

1. Relativity and reference frames in classical mechanics 1.1 The origins of Galilean relativity
The term “reference frame” was coined in the 19 th century, but it has a long prehistory, beginning, perhaps, with the emergence of the Copernican theory. The significant point was not the replacement of the earth by the sun as the center of all motion in the universe, but the recognition of both the earth and the sun as merely possible points of view from which the motions of the celestial bodies ma…

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