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Assignment3 Apr092025

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4 views1 page

Assignment3 Apr092025

Uploaded by

akshatmehra270
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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P102: Introductory Physics - II

Assignment 3: March 26, 2025

Due Date: April 9, 2025 During Class

1. Read and summarise the ether-drag hypothesis of Fresnel and Fizeau’s experiment to test it. You may refer to
section 1.7 of Resnick’s book on Relativity.

2. Kinetic energy is conserved in an elastic collision by definition. Show, using the Galilean transformation
equations, that if a collision is elastic in one inertial frame it is elastic in all inertial frames.
3. Consider two inertial observers, one on a train and the other on the ground. Each observer sees that a particle,
initially at rest with respect to the train, is accelerated by a constant force applied to it for a time t. Show
that for each observer the work done by the force results in a gain in kinetic energy of the particle. However
one observer measures it to be 12 ma2 t2 and the other observer measures it to be 21 ma2 t2 + maut. Here m, a
are the mass and acceleration of the particle, respectively, and u is the velocity of the train with respect to the
ground.
2
4. Show that the differential operator associated with the wave equation, i.e. ∇2 − c12 ∂t
∂
2 is invariant under a

Lorentz transformation.
p
5. Show that the proper time, dτ = dt 1 − β 2 is invariant under a Lorentz transformation. Use v 2 = (dx/dt)2 +
(dy/dt)2 + (dz/dt)2

6. The length of the spaceship is measured to be exactly half its proper length. What is the speed of the spaceship
with respect to the observer’s frame. What is the dilatation of the spaceship’s unit of time?
7. Consider successive Lorentz transformations from the frame (S → S ′ )|v and (S ′ → S ′′ )|v′ . Show that (S →
v+v ′
S ′′ )|v′′ is a Lorentz transformation if v ′′ = 1+(vv ′ )/c2 .

8. A rocket is receding from earth at a speed 0.2c. Light on the rocket appears to be blue to the passengers on
the ship, what color does it appear to a person on Earth?

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