Midterm exam and final exam

Worksheets and homework

Homework for Monday September 6, 2004

• Text problem 1-4, p. 30
• Text problem 1-11, p. 31

• 1-13
• 1-17

• Problems P1, P2, P3  (on attachments in email)
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• Obtain equations (3-14) from equations (3-13)
• Problem 3-5
• Problem 3-9

• Prob 3-8 . Use the Minkowski graph I handed out.  For x'=1, ct'= 1, calculate x and ct from LTE and show they are consistent with x and ct values from your diagram.
• Emailed problem

• In a universe where c = 100 m/s, the speed limit is 28 m/s (around 63 mph). A VW beetle is travelling at 25 m/s when it is passed by a Lincoln Continental. The police officers observing this situation notice that the observed lengths of the two cars are the same, and they know that the Continental has a rest length twice that of the VW beetle. They write a ticket for the Continental at $20 for every m/s over the limit. What is the amount of the ticket?
• An electron is travelling in the lab with vx = 0.5 c and vy = 0.3c. It is being overtaken by a spaceship travelling at v = 0.7 c. Find the velocity components of the electron as seen by the spaceship.
• The doppler frequency formula for electromagnetic radiation of frequency fo and received at frequency f by an object moving directly away from the source of the light is givens by                    f = fo sqrt((1-v/c)/(1+v/c)) as indicated in the text on p. 137, Eq. 5-15. Check this out for a light sosurce emitting a burst of photons once each second, and a rocket moving away from the source at v = 0.8c. Try starting the earth and rocket clocks and initializing the coordinate systems when one burst passes the rocket, then figure out how much time the rocket clock will elapse until the next burst of photons passes it. This will give you the apparent frequency as seen on the rocket. [This is an overtaking problem, where a photon overtakes the moving rocket. When you figure out how long it will take between overtakings in the lab, you can convert to rocket time.]
• Flash Gordon and Earth are stationary with respect to one another separated by a distance of 1.2 x 10^10 m.. Two rockets R1 and R2 are moving together, and at x=x' = 0 = t = t' = 0 rocket R1 passes Earth. At 1.00 minutes on Flash's clock, Rocket R1 passes Flash.  a) What time does R1's clock read when it passes Flash?  When Earth's clock reads 1.00 minutes, rocket R2 passes Earth. b) What time does R2's clock read when it passes Earth?
• In class, we worked out the fringe shift for the Fizeau experiment. Use this fringe shift formula and the data given on p. 48 to calculate the expected fringe shift, based on Einstein's velocity addition formula (it will be slightly smaller than the experimental value).

• Text Prob. 5-11  Neon is an orange-red color, say, around 610 nm. Where is the visible limit of human vision?
• Text Prob 5-12
• Text Prob 5-14
• Text Prob. 6-4
  

• A beam of protons is accelerated to a high enough energy to create a minimum of 10 additional protom mass equivalents when striking a stationary proton target. Find the kinetic energy needed in the lab for the bombarding protons
• A particle of rest mass 2.50 x 10^-24 kg overtakes an identical particle and they stick together after the collision. The leading particle travels at 0.6c while the trailing particle travels at 0.8 c. Find a) the total energy after the collision, b) the total momentum after the collision, c) the velocity after the collision, and d) the rest mass after the collision.