Proper velocity the traveling object. It equals the object's momentum p divided by its rest mass "m", and is made up of the space-like components of the object's four-vector velocity. William Shurcliff's monograph mentioned its early use in the Sears and Brehme text. Fraundorf has explored its pedagogical value while Ungar, Baylis and Hestenes have examined its relevance from group theory and geometric algebra perspectives. Proper velocity is sometimes referred to as celerity. Unlike the more familiar coordinate velocity v, proper velocity is synchrony-free (does not require synchronized clocks) and is useful for describing both super-relativistic and sub-relativistic motion. Like coordinate velocity
Velocity-addition formula for the perpendicular and parallel components can be cast in vector form as follows, a trick which also works for Lorentz transformations of other 3d physical quantities originally in set up standard configuration. Introduce the velocity vector in the unprimed frame and in the primed frame, and split them into components parallel ( ∥ ) and perpendicular (⊥) to the relative velocity vector (see hide box below) thus then with the usual Cartesian unit basis vectors , set the velocity in the unprimed frame to be which gives, using the results for the standard configuration, where · is the dot