Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>>> Darren New wrote:
>>>> Nope. Electric charge, yes, but not mass. Photons will have mass 
>>>> proportional to their frequency, and frequency isn't apparently 
>>>> quantified.
>>>
>>>     Define mass.
>>
>> E=mc^2?  Isn't mass measured in electron-volts?
>>
>> Why? What's your point?  (This isn't sarcastic. I don't know enough to 
>> know why someone who knows more would point out that I didn't define 
>> mass, or that my naive understanding of it isn't correct.)
> 
>     The usual convention I've seen is to state that photons have 
> momentum, not mass. A lot of physics textbooks (these days) don't talk 
> about relativistic mass or mass changing when one speeds up.

Fair enough.

To be more precise in what I was saying, the amount of energy and hence 
frequency of a photon is going to decrease in a smooth and 
differentiable way as it climbs up out of a gravity well, according to 
relativity as I understand it. Hence, not all quantities in "quantum 
physics" have discontinuous integral values.

> physicists did not like the suggestion that a body gains more mass just 
> by going faster.

That's OK. I also talk about how "big" a particle is. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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