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5.9 Exercise 35

Avg difficulty 2.5

An observer standing by the railroad tracks sees two bolts of lightning strike the ends of a 500-m-long train simultaneously at the instant the middle of the train passes him at 50 m/s. Use the Lorentz transformation to find the time between the lightning strikes as measured by a passenger seated in the middle of the train.

OpenStax University Physics Volume 3, 5.9 Relativistic Energy, exercise 35

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Adapted from University Physics Volume 3 © 2016 Rice University. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source: University Physics Volume 3. Imported at revision db44eb9.