from Cavendish Press Ann Arbor

Relativity Problem Supplement (with Solutions)

for use with "A serious but not ponderous book about Relativity"


The cost of the supplement (with solutions) is $10.

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About the problems

Problems range from exercises to thought-provoking applications.

Here are two examples:

Problem 7.01

Calculate the value of the relativistic factor, gamma, for the following values of the velocity, v.
See equation 7.8b on page 90 of “Maxwell’s Conundrum – A serious but not ponderous book about Relativity.”

(A) v = 8km/sec (the orbital speed of low-orbit satellites)
(B) v = 0.1c (c is the speed of light, 3x108m/s)
(C) v = 0.25c
...

(L) v = 0.999c
(M) v = 0.9999c
(N) Find some meaningful way to graph your results.

Problem 9.03

A spark occurs at a point P at one end of a large warehouse that is 50 meters long, at time, t=0.
An explosion occurs at the other end of the warehouse.
It is determined by an observer system consisting of synchronized clocks at rest in the warehouse, that the explosion occurred one tenth of a microsecond (= 0.1x10-6sec) later than the spark.

(A) Find the value of tau˛, the square of the time-like invariant space time interval.
(B) Is the value of tau˛ negative? If so, what do you conclude?
(C) Find the value of sigma˛, the space-like invariant space–time interval, between the two events (between the spark and the explosion).
(D) Generalizing (perhaps without sufficient justification) from the results in Problems 9.01 and 9.02, would you judge it likely that the spark caused the explosion?

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