Hahaa.......Shoelevy, if you understood my post, you would see relating m to v is only for the limiting purpose. Of course, everyone knows that m eventually is a fixed quantity, which will never be reached in the process. So is v.
But talking about being "
very confused with the mathematics and variables involved", here is what you wrote:
not right because the m in this equation is relativistic m.
not rest m so when u use this method, you haven't shown anything about rest m. and besides, we know photons do travel at c....so K is either infinity if m not =0 or it is 0 if m=0. neither of these 2 cases are true as we all know photons haf K not equivalent to these 2 values.
your second part is correct
You are suggesting i'm in error stating
The equation relating kinetic energy to velocity is:
K = (y - 1) mc^2 --------------------(1)
where K is kinetic energy, m is rest mass and y represents the time dilation factor:
But i'm correct in saying
Now a new velocity-dependent mass is defined, which we call M.
Total E = y(mc^2) = Mc^2 ----------------(5)
It can be seen that M = ym, where y is a function of velocity.
For a photon, we know that total energy is not zero. Therefore y(mc^2) cannot be zero and M cannot be zero.
Hence, although a photon has zero rest mass, it has relativistic mass.
So you are saying m is relativistic mass, and M is also relativistic mass, although there is a clearly defined mathematical relation between the two? This sounds to me like you are inconsistent. Care to clarify?
And oh yes, if you decide to come back and take me up on my offer, please utilize the quote/unquote tags.
i suggest reading up from university texts and outside books and getting the variables and argument right. no offence chaosknight :oops: ...but my very strong opinion is based on previous study experience and experience with OTHERS, not u, who ask very silly questions easily explained if they had read up a little more. :!: 
It's just that all the formulae are giving me headache..
