Week+Three

Discussion Question

Looking for a Heartbeat. If you were in a high-speed spaceship traveling away from Earth at a speed close to the speed of light, would you measure your normal pulse to be slower, the same, or faster than it might be measured if you were still on Earth? If you could measure the pulse of a friend back on Earth during your journey, how fast would his pulse be compared with yours? Assignment 1

Length Contraction Let's continue to investigate your space vacation from last week. Your spaceship, which has a proper length of 300 m, passes near a space platform while you are moving at a relative speed of 0.86 c. What is the length of the spaceship when measured by someone on the space platform? What is the length of the spaceship from your perspective in the spaceship? The length is, of course, different from these two frames of reference. Does the length really change? Use the following equation for length contraction to solve this problem and post your answer in the Project section of this site. Make sure to show how you arrived at your answers. If you need assistance or have any questions please post in the Week 3 Assignment Discussion.

Equation for length contraction L = L' * √ (1 - v 2 /c 2 )

Where:

L = The length of the spaceship as seen by the observer L' = The proper length of the spaceship v = The velocity of the spaceship c = The speed of light.

Milestone 1 This week, I look forward to hearing your first thoughts about the type of project you might select and the topic you are most interested in pursuing for your Final Project. The project supports your development of a Research Proposal related to a course topic you find particularly interesting. What question would you study further if you could? How would you plan to try to answer that question? Learning more about creating a research plan will enable focus on the creation of a question that might actually be examined; clearing stating research objectives; locating your own references and looking at some previous research related to your chosen question.

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