Question

Describe the local principle of equivalence.

Answer 1

Equivalence principle states that gravitational and inertial forces are of a similar nature and often indistinguishable.

In the Newtonian form it asserts, in effect, that, within a windowless laboratory freely falling in a uniform gravitational field, experimenters would be unaware that the laboratory is in a state of non-uniform motion.

All dynamical experiments yield the same results as obtained in an inertial state of uniform motion unaffected by gravity.

In Einstein’s version, the principle asserts that in free-fall the effect of gravity is totally abolished in all possible experiments and general relativity reduces to special relativity, as in the inertial state.