35. Special Relativity

Consequences of Relativity

Multiple Choice
The international space station travels in orbit at a speed of 7.67 km/s. If an astronaut and his brother start a stop watch at the same time, on Earth, and then the astronaut spends 6 months on the space station, what is the difference in time on their stopwatches when the astronaut returns to Earth? Note that 6 months is about 1.577 x 10⁷ s, and c = 3 x 10 ⁸ m/s.
Multiple Choice
In the following figure, a right triangle is shown in its rest frame, S'. In the lab frame, S, the triangle moves with a speed v. How fast must the triangle move in the lab frame so that it becomes an isosceles triangle?
Multiple Choice
Carol is in the same reference frame with a clock. Bianca is flying past Carol and her clock at a high speed. Bianca sees Carol's clock ticking at one quarter the rate that Carol sees. How fast is Bianca flying relative to Carol?
Multiple Choice
Carl is standing in a park 1000 m across. Rohan flies over the park at a very high speed, first passing over the east end of the park, and then passing over the west end. Carl and Rohan are discussing the time interval between when Rohan passed over the east end of the park and when he passed over the west end of the park. Who measured the proper time?
Multiple Choice
According to Olive, her new super-speeder space yacht is $60 . 0 m$ long. Lennon is on Earth watching Olive approaching at $0.964 c$ . How long is Olive's space yacht according to Lennon?
Multiple Choice
As seen from a distant planet, ships A and B fly toward each other, with ship A having a speed of $0.91 c$ . and ship B having a speed of $0.55 c$ . According to the pilot of ship A, how fast is ship B approaching?