Set Up a Coordinate System

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A simple and very convenient one is to set up a coordinate system. So at some point in space, you choose it to be the origin of your coordinates. You make coordinate axes like x, y, and z for example. And x might be going left, right. y might be going forward and backward. z might be going up and down. Three perpendicular directions in space. There's an x component to the vector, a y component, and a z component. If the force that we're pushing on happens to be lining up in exactly the same direction as the x axis, then the y component and the z component will be zero. They still exist, but their magnitudes are

My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The idea was to explain physics in a pedagogical way, concentrating on established ideas rather than speculations, with the twist that I tried to include and explain any equations that seemed useful, even though no prior mathematical knowledge was presumed. I’m in the process of writing a series of three books inspired by those videos, and the first one is coming out now: The Biggest Ideas In The Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. For this solo episode I go through one of the highlights from the book: explaining the mathematical and physical basis of Einstein’s equation of general relativity, relating mass and energy to the curvature of spacetime. Hope it works!

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