Physics 426

Midterm Exam

Spring 2013

Name
Time limit: 70 minutes
You may refer to one sheet of notes (8 x 11, both sides)
Please remove your hat and turn off and put away all electronic devices other than your calculator.
Perform all of your work on separate, blank sheets of paper and staple this sheet to the front.
The credit you receive on each problem will depend more on how you get your answer than on what answer you get.
There is no need to be as wordy as I ask you to be on homework, but you must show your work or give at least a brief
explanation for how you obtain every answer. I give no credit for unsupported answers even if correct. I do give
partial credit for partially correct solutions, but only when I can determine that what you are doing is partially correct.
Make certain that all numerical answers are given with a reasonable number of significant digits (when in doubt, three is
usually a good compromise) and that you have included appropriate and simplified units.
Check your answers for physical reasonableness when possible; I do deduct a small number of points for plainly
ridiculous answers that you dont comment on.

1. In flat spacetime, Julie moves a distance of 5.0 minutes from the planet Aikido to the planet Zumba at constant velocity
(as measured by Bob in the inertial lab reference frame in which both planets are at rest.) According to Julies own
watch the elapsed time for the trip was 2.0 minutes.
a) [5] What is the spacetime interval between the two eventsA = Julie leaves Aikido and B = Julie arrives at
Zumba? [Never forget that unsupported answers receive no credit.]
b) [10] How long a time did the trip take according to Bob?
c) [10] What was the relative velocity between Julie and Bob?

2.

It has been determined that a supermassive black hole with mass M = 4 ! 10 6 M ! is located at the center of the Milky
way galaxy at a distance from us of about 27,000 light years.
a) [5] What is the r-coordinate of the event horizon for this black hole? Express your answer in both meters and
seconds.
b) [10] What is the approximate value of rouch , the value of the r-coordinate at which a human body experiences a tidal
difference in gravitational acceleration equal to gearth over its height? [Hint: Precisely as you did in a homework
problem, start with g =

dg
M
!h ]
, and find rouch from gEarth =
dr rouch
r2

c)

[10] If you fell directly (i.e., radially) into this black hole from a great distance, very approximately how long a time
would it take you to fall from its event horizon to the place where tidal forces begin to hurt? [Approximate does
not mean, without explanation!]
d) EXTRA CREDIT [10] If you had fallen directly into this black hole from an essentially infinite distance, how fast
would you have been moving (relative to shell observers) when you passed the solar system?

3.

In the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole, a shell observer at r = 5M throws a stone upward with v = 0.60 . (Thats
quite an arm!)
a)

[7] What is the stones energy per unit mass,

Eshell
, as determined locally (i.e., using special relativity) by the shell
m

observer?

E
?
m
c) [6] What is the maximum r-coordinate that the stone reaches before coming to rest and falling back toward the black
hole?
d) [6] How fast would the stone have had to be thrown in order to escape the black hole?
b) [6] What is the stones conserved energy per unit mass,

AJM:5/6/13

Score

/100

4.

Starting with the Schwarzschild metric and using the formula for particle energy per unit mass,

E "
2M % dt
= $1 !
,
'
m #
r & d(

dr
for the case of a particle moving purely in the radial
dt
direction. Include a few words explaining each step of the derivation. [Your formula should depend only on r, M,
E
and
.]
m
b) [5] Either using the formula derived in part a or simply starting from scratch, show that the rate of change of the rcoordinate with proper time for a particle moving purely in the radial direction is
a)

[10] Derive the formula for the bookkeeper velocity

dr
2M
" E%
= $ ' (1+
# m&
d!
r
c)

[10] Use the formula in part b, to find the elapsed wristwatch time that it takes a particle falling from rest at a large
distance to fall from r = 8M to r = 0 . [Your answer should depend only on M.]

Miscellaneous information

2M & 2
dr 2
#
d! 2 = % 1 "
dt "
" r 2 d) 2
(
$
2M &
r '
#
%$ 1 "
(
r '

E "
2M % dt
= $1 !
'
m #
r & d(

M ! = 1.477 km

G / c 2 = 7.43 ! 10 "28 m/kg

AJM:5/6/13

c = 3.00 ! 10 8 m/s