Thursday, April 5, 2007

For today's lab ...

We measure Planck's constant, roughly.

Procedure

READ THE PROCEDURE. Really.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Relativity exercises

There are a few sneaky things in these exercises. And, one outright error.

For number 10, Webassign simply has the wrong answers coded. So I will tell you the answer Webassign wants for part a is 316 s ... the real answer is more like 296 s. Part B we will cover in class on Thursday.

For number 4, you want to set up something like "mv = (0.97)(gamma)mv" if you are supposed to find the velocity for 3% error.

For number 6, keep in mind that you want the difference in velocities between the Enterprise and the Klingon ship, as observed from the Enterprise. One of the velocities you put into the relativistic velocity addition formula should be negative ...

Some of the other problems have subtleties, but nothing beyond what we covered in lecture or what you might find in the example problems. There will be time to field some questions in class on Thursday.

And, I hope to have the relativity notes online before week's end.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Homework

My bad, I mistyped the due date for the homework ... as a result, it came due last night and it should not have.

I just switched the due date to Monday evening to fix the problem. You all should be able to work on it now.