Another Physics Misconception
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I bet you learned in school that momentum is mass times velocity - I sure did! However,for objects moving close to the speed of light, like the particles in the Large Hadron Collideror light itself, this equation is no longer accurate. Instead, we use these equationsthat I talked about in more detail in the video "E=mc^2 is incomplete".If you take them as your starting points and solve for momentum, you'll find that objectswith mass have momentum equal to their mass times velocity, DIVIDED by the square rootof one minus velocity squared over the speed of light squared. That square root part doesn'tmake much difference if your velocity is small compared to the speed of light, because thenv over c is really small and 1 minus something small ...
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I bet you learned in school that momentum is mass times velocity - I sure did! However,for objects moving close to the speed of light, like the particles in the Large Hadron Collideror light itself, this equation is no longer accurate. Instead, we use these equationsthat I talked about in more detail in the video "E=mc^2 is incomplete".If you take them as your starting points and solve for momentum, you'll find that objectswith mass have momentum equal to their mass times velocity, DIVIDED by the square rootof one minus velocity squared over the speed of light squared. That square root part doesn'tmake much difference if your velocity is small compared to the speed of light, because thenv over c is really small and 1 minus something small ...
