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The term is most often used in the context of the application of '''local inertial frames''' to small regions of a [[gravitational field]]. Although gravitational [[tidal forces]] will cause the background geometry to become noticeably [[non-Euclidean]] over larger regions, if we restrict ourselves to a sufficiently small region containing a cluster of objects falling together in an ''effectively'' uniform gravitational field, their physics can be described as the physics of that cluster in a space free from explicit background gravitational effects.
{{main|Equivalence principle}}
When constructing his [[general theory of relativity]], [[Albert Einstein|Einstein]] made the following observation: a freely falling object in a gravitational field will not be able to detect the existence of the field by making local measurements ("a falling man feels no gravity"). Einstein was then able to complete his general theory by arguing that the physics of curved spacetime must reduce over small regions to the physics of simple inertial mechanics (in this case [[special relativity]]) for small freefalling regions.
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==See also==
▲*[[Equivalence principle]]
*[[Inertial frame of reference]]
*[[Local coordinates]]
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