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Because most physicists are ultimately interested in predicting the results of experiments with actual numbers. And that demands the use of coordinates.
by abdullahkhalids 5y ago
Because most physicists are ultimately interested in predicting the results of experiments with actual numbers. And that demands the use of coordinates.
- JadeNB 5y ago> Because most physicists are ultimately interested in predicting the results of experiments with actual numbers. And that demands the use of coordinates. Of course, at some point, you need numbers! But there's no reason that those numbers need to infest the whole computation; you can de-coordinatise as soon as possible and re-coordinatise as late as possible, and in between you not only can but must think in a coordinate-free fashion. (I am a mathematician, not a physicist, and am not presuming to tell physicists how to do their job—this isn't an argument about whether they should do things this way. I'm just pointing out that they could, and that it seems not only possible but advantageous. But of course long-established knowledge of what actually works in physics beats this tyro's guess at what could.)