Frame of Reference - Different Aspects of "frame of Reference" - Measurement Apparatus

Measurement Apparatus

A further aspect of a frame of reference is the role of the measurement apparatus (for example, clocks and rods) attached to the frame (see Norton quote above). This question is not addressed in this article, and is of particular interest in quantum mechanics, where the relation between observer and measurement is still under discussion (see measurement problem).

In physics experiments, the frame of reference in which the laboratory measurement devices are at rest is usually referred to as the laboratory frame or simply "lab frame." An example would be the frame in which the detectors for a particle accelerator are at rest. The lab frame in some experiments is an inertial frame, but it is not required to be (for example the laboratory on the surface of the Earth in many physics experiments is not inertial). In particle physics experiments, it is often useful to transform energies and momenta of particles from the lab frame where they are measured, to the center of momentum frame "COM frame" in which calculations are sometimes simplified, since potentially all kinetic energy still present in the COM frame may be used for making new particles.

In this connection it may be noted that the clocks and rods often used to describe observers' measurement equipment in thought, in practice are replaced by a much more complicated and indirect metrology that is connected to the nature of the vacuum, and uses atomic clocks that operate according to the standard model and that must be corrected for gravitational time dilation. (See second, meter and kilogram).

In fact, Einstein felt that clocks and rods were merely expedient measuring devices and they should be replaced by more fundamental entities based upon, for example, atoms and molecules.