relativity

A concept that states that all events can be modeled from within independant inertial frames of reference and still yield the same result.
IE: a ball thrown from point A to point B strikes B. When obsereved by a moving vertex C may have a different velocity when observed from A but the net force on B is observed as the same from either A or C.

In really small words:
It don't hurt you more if I run after he throws.

Albert Einstein submitted his theories on Special Relativity and General Relativity in the early 20th century. Measurements of events are all relative to one's position in space and time. There is no absolute space or time. The only invariant in any inertial reference frame is the speed of light in a vacuum. Proof of these theories can be seen in the occurrence of time dialation and asingularity in spacetime

"Relativity" is the name of a popular woodcut created by M.C. Escher in 1953. The illustration is centered on three staircases in a triangular arrangement, each one perpendicular to the others in three-dimensional space. Featureless men and women are walking up and down these stairs past each other, but every one seems to use a different direction for "down" -- so that one's wall is another's floor. One part of the illustration even has two men descending a staircase perpendicular to each other.

This illustration was popular in the 1960s and 1970s because of its psychedelic effect, but it can be seen as having a deeper metaphor -- that of different people living in different worlds side-by-side. One may consider an act good that another right next to him would think of as bad; one may think that progress is in this direction, another that it's over that way instead. But the figures in the woodcut live side by side, going about their activities, cooperating with those who agree with their sense of "up" and allowing those who don't to continue on their own way.

"If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
- Albert Einstein

Rel`a*tiv"i*ty (-t?v"?-t?), n.

The state of being relative; as, the relativity of a subject.

Coleridge.

 

© Webster 1913.