PROBLEMS
- What is the meaning of the word relativity in physics?
- Can objects travel faster than light under any circumstances?
- Is it possible to travel in the rest frame of light?
- What is strange about relativistic velocity addition?
- Is mass conservation a law of nature?
- In the equation are we to understand this as a mass in motion through space at speed ?
- Which is more massive: A hot tub of water or the same tub cooled?
- Rocket A travels at 0.9c in the +x direction with respect to reference frame O, while rocket B heads toward it at 0.8c in the -x direction as measured in the same reference frame. What velocity does rocket B have as measured by A?
- In the question above, rocket A shines a laser at rocket B. What velocity does B measure for the incoming laser beam?
- How fast must you travel if you wish to travel to a star that is away from earth, and arrive in one day on your own watch?
- How long would your family back on earth have to wait for the news of your successful arrival in the previous problem? You send news in Morse-code laser pulses.
- A train travels at a speed large enough that it is 1% shorter as observed from alongside the tracks. How fast is it traveling?
- What happens to the train's width and height in the previous problem?
- Show how a muon can arrive at the ground after traveling a proper distance of 100 km if the muon's proper lifetime is only 2.2 micro-seconds. Do this both by length contraction and time dilation.
- Two identical particles traveling with opposite velocities collide inelastically and form a single particle. What must their speeds be if the new particle is twice as massive as the sum of the former particles?
- What momentum is required of an electron in order for its total energy to be 10x its rest energy?
- What is the momentum of a red photon of wavelength 600nm?
- How many photons per second (from the previous problem) would have to reflect off of a surface in order for it to be pushed by an average force of a nano-newton? Recall that .