A spaceship leaves Earth, travels to Pluto (which is 5.0 hours of distance away

Question

A spaceship leaves Earth, travels to Pluto (which is 5.0 hours of distance away at the time), and then returns to Earth exactly 11.0 hours later. Assume that the spaceship’s acceleration time is very short, so that it spends virtually all its time travelling at a constant speed.

(Assume also that Earth and Pluto are approximately at rest with respect to each other and the Sun during the journey. They aren’t really, but they are moving much, much slower than the spaceship, so we can approximate their speeds to be zero.)

(1) Define the 3 events that are likely to be useful in analyzing this story.

(2) Does the spaceship have constant velocity during its entire trip? Explain your answer. (think about direction)

(3) Is the spaceship at rest with respect to one single inertial reference frame during its entire trip?

(4) What is the speed of the ship during each part of its journey?

(5) Calculate the time measured by the ship’s clock during the entire trip (When it leaves Earth to when it gets back).

Explanation / Answer

(1) Three event useful are

(i)Since time to reach pluto is 5 hour ,but it came back in 11 hour so it may have stopped at pluto

(ii) Distance between two can tell us the speed of spaceship

iii)The speed of spaceship is comparable to the speed of light

(2)No ,spaceship does not have constant speed as direction of velocity is changing and velocity is a vector quantity

(3)Yes .the ship is at rest with respect to inertial frame as we are assuming it to be at constant speed

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