I know that E is energy and that M is mass but what is C Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ???. And also is light a gas,solid or liquid
c is the speed of light which is generally taken as 3E<sup>8</sup>m/sec. The actual figure is 299,792,458m/sec or thereabouts. In more understandable terms that is about 7.5 times around the earth per second. None of the above. It is believed to be massless quantum packets of electromagnetic ratiation.
Light is made up of photons, which acts like both a particle (having momentum, and being able to "push" things) and a wave (having zero mass). According to the superstring theory, it is believed that light is actually a vibration (disturbace) from a higher dimension.
c is the speed of electromagnetic waves in vacuum, as first solved by Maxwell about a century and a half ago in his famous wave equation. Strictly correctly speaking, a photon is the particle apparition of light, observable when electromagnetic waves are intercepted and deliver momentum to objects. It is a very common conversational convenience to speak of a photon as being an electromagnetic wave in flight, but there is much controversial discussion among professional physicists to the point that a photon may only exist as a particle when it is at the moment of being captured by a receiving object or at the moment that it is being ejected by an emitting object.
If you don't know what c is, you probably don't know that m is the rest mass of the body. When a body moves, its mass is dilated (reduced) according to special relativity. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
J77, Welcome to SciF. However, you have things a bit crosswise. Not only does rest mass not change but the change used to be referred to as relavistic mass. That term is rerely ever mentioned any more. The concept has been abandoned. They now refer to the objects momentum. Lastly the change is an increase not a decrease with increased relative veloicty.
