What is an accelerating reference frame?

Lucille Saetteurn: A reference frame is in general, your immediate environment. Think of it as the vehicle in which you are traveling.Inertial reference frames are reference frames which move at a constant velocity. Constant speed, constant direction. Additionally, in order for it to be an inertial reference frame, there must be no gravitational field. A reference frame can also be classified as an inertial reference frame if the acceleration of the reference frame is in the same direction as the gravitational field, as it is for astronauts in a spacecraft orbiting the Earth.An accelerating reference frame is a reference frame which is speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. It isn't that the "laws of physics will not work the same in accelerating reference frames"...you still cannot travel faster than light, and most laws you've studied in classical mechanics still do hold true. The difference is that you feel perceived gravity within an accelerating refe! rence frame. This complicates the matters for special relativity, such that Einstein's simple light clock thought experiment equations no longer are as simple. An accelerating reference frame is no longer applicable to special relativity, and is instead discussed with the more complicated set of mathematics called general relativity....Show more

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Augustus Sarria: To put it in the most simple terms:An accelerating frame of reference means that your frame of reference is continuously increasing in velocity, or accelerating, so it seems as though there's another force acting upon you. When you say the speed of light is constant for all inertial frames, it just means your frame of reference (how you measure something) isn't affected by time, so there's no weird ficticious forces acting on you. An example of this would be like the centrifugal force that you experience when you're in ! a turning car. Though you might feel a force seemingly pushin! g you out, it really is just a property of matter, inertia. In summary, you can't go faster than the speed of light. In an accelerating frame, you might measure the speed of light to be faster than what you measure in an non-inertial frame, but it basically is just the same speed. Special relativity turns into weird stuff after that....Show more