Mass in special relativity what causes these particles to be termed "massless." However, even massless particles have a relativistic mass, which varies with their observed energy in various frames of reference, The invariant mass is the ratio of four-momentum (the four-dimensional generalization of classical momentum) to four-velocity: and is also the ratio of four-acceleration to four-force when the rest mass is constant. The four-dimensional form of Newton's second law is: The relativistic expressions for "E" and "p" obey the relativistic energy–momentum relation: where the m is the rest mass, or the invariant mass for systems, and "E" is the total energy. The equation is
Distribution function (physics) Distribution function (physics) In molecular kinetic theory in physics, a particle's distribution function is a function of seven variables, formula_1, which gives the number of particles per unit volume in single-particle phase space. It is the number of particles per unit volume having approximately the velocity formula_2 near the position formula_3 and time formula_4. The usual normalization of the distribution function is where, "N" is the total number of particles, and "n" is the number density of particles – the number of particles per unit volume, or the density divided by the mass of individual particles. A distribution function may