Question

Jack built an affordable homemade particle accelerator in his basement with only one magnetic field. A free proton with a mass of 1.6726 x 10^-27 kg is accelerated by the magnetic field with a force F = 180.pN for 5.16ns.

a. What is the final velocity of the proton after being accelerated?

b. Jack strangely calculated the momentum of the accelerated proton using Newtonian mechanics. However, we know that is insufficient to describe the motion of the proton at near-lightspeed. How much is Jack’s calculation off by compared to the proton’s relativistic momentum? (What is the percent error?)

Answer 1