• Question: Do you use Newtonian mechanics at all in your work?

    Asked by danm to James_M on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: James M Monk

      James M Monk answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Not very much, but of course I have to know it. The particles we deal with travel at relativistic speeds, so we mostly need to use (special) relativity.

      There is a lot of engineering that goes into designing and building the detectors (which can weight thousands of tons), so I guess classical mechanics is used by the engineers, but that’s not what I do.

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