Relativistic Mechanics-II
As the velocity of a particle increases, its rest mass:
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1 solution
Moderator note:
Nice explanation. Many physicists that study high energy have stopped talking about relativistic mass, and just consider the rest mass. Instead, they consider the "increase" in mass to be a scaling property of the momentum. It is a very important point that the rest mass is invariant to motion.
Rest mass (also called invariant mass ) of an object or a particle, is the magnitude of mass of the particle when it is literally at rest .
Every particle has got it's own rest mass which is always fixed i.e. the rest mass doesn't change when the object starts moving. So, we can say that rest mass is just a measure of the particle's inertia .
But when the same particle is subjected to an increase in momentum it's mass increases but not the rest mass . i.e. as the velocity of an object increases with respect to a reference point, it's mass also increases.
The theory of relativity gives a better explanation of the reason as to why an object's mass increases with an increase in velocity.