Chapter 36: Q. 13 (page 1059)
A cosmic ray travels through the earth’s atmosphere in as measured by experimenters on the ground. How long does the journey take according to the cosmic ray?
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Chapter 36: Q. 13 (page 1059)
A cosmic ray travels through the earth’s atmosphere in as measured by experimenters on the ground. How long does the journey take according to the cosmic ray?
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A ball of mass m traveling at a speed of 0.80c has a perfectly inelastic collision with an identical ball at rest. If Newtonian physics were correct for these speeds, momentum conservation would tell us that a ball of mass 2m departs the collision with a speed of 0.40c. Let’s do a relativistic collision analysis to determine the mass and speed of the ball after the collision.
a. What is gp, written as a fraction like a/b?
b. What is the initial total momentum? Give your answer as a fraction times mc. c. What is the initial total energy? Give your answer as a fraction times mc2 . Don’t forget that there are two balls.
d. Because energy can be transformed into mass, and vice versa, you cannot assume that the final mass is 2m. Instead, let the final state of the system be an unknown mass M traveling at the unknown speed uf. You have two conservation laws. Find M and uf.
A distant quasar is found to be moving away from the earth at . A galaxy closer to the earth and along the same line of sight is moving away from us at . What is the recessional speed of the quasar, as a fraction of , as measured by astronomers in the other galaxy?
A proton is accelerated to 0.999c.
a. What is the proton’s momentum?
b. By what factor does the proton’s momentum exceed its Newtonian momentum?
Consider the inelastic collision in which an electron-positron pair is produced in a head-on collision between two electrons moving in opposite directions at the same speed. This is similar to Figure 36.39, but both of the initial electrons are moving.
a. What is the threshold kinetic energy? That is, what minimum kinetic energy must each electron have to allow this process to occur?
b. What is the speed of an electron with this kinetic energy?
A particle has momentum . What is the particle’s speed in m/s?
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