Physics 200 Homework 5, Part Two Physics 200 Homework 5, Part TwoYou may find section 11.4 of the book useful for the units.In the on-line homework, the questions about the spaceship were meant to help provide you with a model of what happens when a massive particle decays:• The particle cannot just turn itself into another, lighter particle and use the difference in mass to create kinetic ene
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Physics 200 Homework 5, Part Two
Physics 200 Homework 5, Part Two
You may find section 11.4 of the book useful for the units.
In the on-line homework, the questions about the spaceship were meant to help provide you
with a model of what happens when a massive particle decays:
• The particle cannot just turn itself into another, lighter particle and use the difference
in mass to create kinetic energy (the first two questions about the spaceship)
• The particle can use some of its mass (the ‘fuel’) to give kinetic energy to two fragments
(the ‘ship’ and the ‘bullet’). Notice that the mass of the fragments (ship+bullet) is less than
the initial mass of the particle (which was made up of ship+bullet+fuel). You can think of
that as ship+bullet+fuel being an unstable system that ‘decays’ and produces two
products whose mass is smaller than initial mass.
Another way in which a particle can loose some of its energy is by emitting some radiation
(light). The recoil will then cause this particle to move. As an illustration, let’s consider the
following question:
1. Consider the ship with the Total Mass Conversion Device from the online homework.
Let’s think of one more way in which such a ship could work: the energy could be
converted to photons (massless particles of light) and ejected all in one direction. If the
same amount of fuel as in question 7 on-line was used, how fast would the ship be
moving after all the fuel is used up, its energy emitted as light?
2. Two protons collide head-on at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), each travelling with a
relativistic velocity, the same for the two protons. A proton’s weight is about 1GeV/c2.
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