BELIEVE ME NOT! - - A SKEPTIC's GUIDE
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Let's generalize our formula for kinetic energy
so that it is relativistically correct.
For a massless particle (like a photon) the expression
(4) doesn't make any sense and is in fact wrong.
Without stopping now to explain where it comes from, I will just
give you the relativistically correct and completely general formula
for the total energy of a particle:
|
(24.16) |
Note that this TOTAL RELATIVISTIC ENERGY has the irreducible
value
E0 = m c2 when the particle is at rest (momentum = zero).
This should ring a bell. To separate the KINETIC ENERGY K
from the total relativistic energy we just subtract off E0.
It turns out [Don't you love that phrase?]
that de Broglie's relation (1)
is relativistically correct!
Thus we can still use it to calculate the total energy
even if the confined particle is ultrarelativistic or massless.
In fact, any particle acts pretty much like a photon
at high enough momentum, where we can ignore m2 c4
in comparison with p2 c2, in which case the formula
simplifies to E = pc or
(for our ultrarelativistic particle in a box)
|
(24.17) |
Next: Black Holes
Up: Particle in a Box
Previous: Bohr's Energy Levels
Jess H. Brewer -
Last modified: Wed Nov 18 17:30:41 PST 2015