Classical Electrodynamics PHY5347

HOMEWORK 13
(January 14, 2013)
Due on Thursday, January 24, 2013
PROBLEM 37
Cosmic Raysmostly very energetic protonsproduce a copious amount of pions as
they collide with molecules in the Earths atmosphere. With a lifetime of only 26
nanoseconds, these pions decay rapidly into muons. The muonswith a lifetime of
2.2 microsecondstravel through Earths atmosphere and eventually get detected by
particle detectors placed at the surface of the Earth (or even underground). Assume
that a large number of muons traveling at 99.99% of the speed of light are produced
100 kilometers above the Earths surface.
(a) Assuming simple Netwonian mechanics, predict the fraction of those muons that
will reach the surface of the Earth?
(b) What is the fraction of muons that will actually reach the surface of the Earth?
Note: Answer this question from the perspective of an observer at rest on the
surface of the Earth.
(c) What is the fraction of muons that will actually reach the surface of the Earth?
Note: Answer this question from the perspective of an observer moving to-
gether with the muons.
PROBLEM 38
Consider the collision of an energetic positron with an electron at rest in the labora-
tory frame. The collision is so violent that the electron-positron pair gets converted
into a pair of muons, i.e., e
+
+ e

+
+

.
(a) Compute the minimum kinetic energy of the positron in the laboratory frame
for the above reaction to proceed.
(b) For that minimum kinetic energy, what is the momentum of the
+
as measured
in the laboratory frame.
(c) For that minimum kinetic energy, what is the momentum of the

as measured
in the laboratory frame.
Useful information: The rest mass of the electron and muon are given by:
m
e
c
2
=0.511 MeV and m

c
2
=105.658 MeV .
PROBLEM 39
As seen by an observer in the laboratory frame, two events have the following space-
time coordinates:
x

1
= (ct
1
=0, x=0) and x

2
= (ct
2
=10, x=0) .
(You can ignore the y and z coordinates throughout this problem).
(a) Could you nd an inertial reference frame in which the time order of the events
would be reversed? That is t

1
>t

2
.
Now consider the following two events as seen by an observer in the laboratory
frame:
x

1
= (ct
1
=0, x=0) and x

2
= (ct
2
=0, x=10) .
(b) Could you nd an inertial reference frame in which t

1
>t

2
.
(c) Could you nd an inertial reference frame in which t

1
<t

2
.
(d) Use a short sentence to summarize what have you learned from this problem.