Talk:Bondi k-calculus

PatrickFoucault's edits of 23 September 2016
I'm not sure what is behind today's edits. As far as I can tell, the argument presented here is nothing like Bondi's argument (which ends on page 103 of Relativity and Common Sense). Is this an argument from another book about k-calculus (in which case the source needs to be given), or did you work it out yourself (which unfortunately isn't allowed under the WP:no original research rule)? --  Dr Greg   talk  18:26, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Well as I have tried to gently point out on your talk page Dr Greg the k-calculus article is now a mess. The section I added on RDE is probably better off somewhere else.I am new to WP so I don't know my way around, but you have 12 years standing with WP. Why not get some of the people in the Physics Project to have a look. I am not going to get involved in your edits because it is a lost cause and I have other projects on WP that seem more productive to me.

Foucault (talk) 01:00, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

On reflection here is what I think
 * The k-calculus article should be written as a non-technical review and history of the k-calculus, with links to more technical expositions based on k-calculus
 * Bondi was a distinguished scientific administrator, his WP bio lists few if any lasting contributions to scientific theory. In the words of C.P. Snow he was a committee man, a safe hand.
 * Relativity and Common Sense is a compendium of articles that appeared in a weekly tabloid. The parts on relativity are blathering gibberish, nearly incomprehensible to both lay people and scientists. The book is riddled with simple errors and contradictions.
 * A number of books and journal articles have picked up the phrase 'k-calculus' and contain their own version of blathering gibberish. Check the European Journal of Physics and you will get a good sample.
 * The reason blathering gibberish is common in these books and articles is that it is difficult to make sense of concepts such as speed, velocity, time, distance once you step out of the formalism of spacetime geometry. That is not to say an attempt should not be made.
 * The underlying idea or device of k_calculus can be summarised in about three sentences which I have done in the RDE section.
 * Whether K-calculus is really used educationally in the way Bondi presented it seems doubtful to me
 * The underlying idea of k-calculus has some educational value, but needs to be distilled out of the blathering gibberish

Foucault (talk) 03:41, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I have removed the entirely unsourced content: . - DVdm (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

"Twins' Paradox"?
The headline "Twins' paradox" is somewhat mislading, I think. Within the section, we just see that Carol's clock will be have lost time, compared to Alice's clock. This is not what the term "twins' paradox" actually means, but the fact that Bob's clock will run slow compared to Alice's and vice versa. Of course, this "paradox" soon turns out to be a pseudo-paradox by taking into account Alice's and Bob's different spaces of simultaneity, as shown by Paul Langevin in 1911.--Slow Phil (talk) 13:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)