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March 28, 2024, 11:02:28 pm

Author Topic: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance  (Read 3214 times)

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wlayton

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Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« on: July 08, 2021, 12:57:21 pm »
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We were given our research investigation at just before the school holidays and our teacher will be away for the first three weeks of school when we get back. I have done a lot of general research into one of the 5 claims but i'm not sure how to come to a viable research question.

The claim i have chosen is: 'Particle accelerators accommodate Special Relativity.'

I have broken it down into (and have notes on all three parts):

- Particle Accelerators (what are they? How do they work? What are they used for (jobs/industries/research)?)
- Special Relativity (What is it? How does it relate?)
- Accommodate (what does this entail?)

I then tried to come up with basic questions and none of them are all that great, and would love some assistance.

Questions (Note: some just have sentence starters/though ideas & i dont really want to use any of them, however they are ok sorta...):

- Has length contraction been disproved through circular particle accelerators? (minimal depth)
- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the ‘ladder in the barn’ paradox through the concept of length contraction? (minimal depth)
- The constant of light has been proved through particle accelerators? (minimal depth)
- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the twins paradox through the concept of time dilation? (minimal depth)
- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the existence of dark matter within the universe?
- Are particle accelerators able to find correlations between… (tweaked to compare some aspect/fields/particles not sure how tho)
- Have particle accelerators used similtaintity to show how length contraction…
- Does simultaneity need to be taken into consideration when trying to prove length contraction in particle accelerators? (not refined enough)
- Why can particle accelerators not speed up electrons and other light weight particle faster than the speed of light? (not refined enough)
- Can current particle accelerators speed up particles faster than the speed of light?
- Want to try write a question about ‘internal frames of reference’ as if it is in a circular PA it is turning and thus not in an internal frame
- LINACs…

Its a little bit of an brain dump, so sorry for that, but would love some help.
Thanks,
Will
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 01:11:21 pm by wlayton »

Elias04

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2021, 01:25:23 pm »
+3
Hello will

First off I'm not really sure what your assessment is asking, however, ill try my best to shed some light on the situation at hand.

I just also recently completed an IRP on this module and can tell you that none of einsteins postulates (time dilation, length contraction etc.) has not been disproved as of yet.

Also, maybe try looking at the earth's muons, as when accelerated, they contract. I don't know if this helps, but just some food fro. thought.

Good luck with your assessment


wlayton

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2021, 01:38:05 pm »
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Thank You, I think that help sort of  ??? I have a look into muon particle accelerators. You said 'as when accelerated, they contract.' so dose that mean talking about how they show length contraction?

K.Smithy

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2021, 02:05:38 pm »
+4
Hey Will!
You've given this claim a lot of thought which is fantastic. I have a few points though, and I hope they can offer some guidance:

- Has length contraction been disproved through circular particle accelerators?
- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the ‘ladder in the barn’ paradox through the concept of length contraction?

These are good questions, but I would be careful with your language. In science, we can't "prove" anything. We can find evidence that supports a given conjecture, but we can never prove anything. The best we can do is provisionally accept hypotheses until they are refuted by anomalous or competing findings.
I think these questions are good, however it may be more difficult to find evidence for it than it would be if you were looking into time dilation.

- The constant of light has been proved through particle accelerators?

This one lacks a clear connection to the special relativity component of the claim. So I probably wouldn't choose this one.

- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the twins paradox through the concept of time dilation?

This is a good question, just refrain from using the word "prove".
Aside from that, this is a great candidate for your research question. Here is a really interesting article (you may have seen while doing your research) that explores this topic. If you do decide to go with this one I'm sure you'd be able to find some graphs and quantitative evidence in research papers and stuff :)

- Have particle accelerators been able to prove the existence of dark matter within the universe?

This one lacks a clear connection to the special relativity component of the claim. So I probably wouldn't choose this one.

- Are particle accelerators able to find correlations between…

I would probably try to refrain from looking into correlations. What's of interest to scientists are causations (because correlations don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things).

- Have particle accelerators used similtaintity to show how length contraction…
- Does simultaneity need to be taken into consideration when trying to prove length contraction in particle accelerators?

I feel that the first one would be difficult to work with.

- Why can particle accelerators not speed up electrons and other lgutb weight particle faster than the speed of light?
- Can current particle accelerators speed up particles faster than the speed of light?

These would be hard to write about given that we know the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit and that nothing can go faster than that. I don't feel that this would be worth investigating. You can essentially explain this speed limit in just a few sentences using the relationship between momentum and velocity.

- Want to try write a question about ‘internal frames of reference’ as if it is in a circular PA it is turning and thus not in an internal frame
- LINACs…

Do you mean inertial? If not, I'm not quite sure what you mean by internal frames of reference.
As for LINACs you could definitely look into those for evidence if you are able to find a way to connect it to length contraction or time dilation in a meaningful manner (this could also be a good way of providing evidence for the practical application of these physics concepts).
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 02:09:25 pm by K.Smithy »
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wlayton

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2021, 02:22:47 pm »
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Thankyou so much, really appreciate it :D

In regards to this statement you made:
This is a good question, just refrain from using the word "prove".
Aside from that, this is a great candidate for your research question. Here is a really interesting article (you may have seen while doing your research) that explores this topic. If you do decide to go with this one I'm sure you'd be able to find some graphs and quantitative evidence in research papers and stuff :)

Someone else just before mention the use of muons and how i could link them in (we talked about these in class and i can see how i would do so), would you suggest that i potentially incorporate that into the question? or into the research investigation itself (like in the writing and evidence)

K.Smithy

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2021, 03:24:03 pm »
+4
Thankyou so much, really appreciate it :D

In regards to this statement you made:
Someone else just before mention the use of muons and how i could link them in (we talked about these in class and i can see how i would do so), would you suggest that i potentially incorporate that into the question? or into the research investigation itself (like in the writing and evidence)

I haven't looked into muon particle accelerators and don't know how they work, but if they work the same as something like the large hadron collider then you could definitely talk about them.
If you're thinking something like how we detect the muons (i.e. they are formed really high up in the atmosphere and we can only detect them because they experience length contraction and time dilation), then I wouldn't include that - only because it doesn't involve particle accelerators.
Your claim is broadly speaking about particle accelerators, so if you wanted to make it more specific then you can definitely explore one single particle accelerator. So, in this case, that would be the muon accelerator. Ultimately, I'd recommend having a look into these muon accelerators and see how they actually work and the evidence for them supporting the idea of length contraction. If you do find that there is good evidence for this, then a potential research question is:
Are muon particle accelerators able to support the 'ladder in the barn' paradox by providing evidence for Einstein's prediction of the phenomenon of length contraction?

If you are able to find evidence for length contraction when looking into muon particle accelerators (or any other particle accelerator) then by all means go for it. However, I do believe it will be easier to look into time dilation as we are able to measure the duration of physical processes experienced by particles. If we compare the duration of a physical process for a particle that is moving slowly to that of a particle that it moving very quickly we may find evidence to support the concept of time dilation :)
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 03:26:02 pm by K.Smithy »
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wlayton

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2021, 10:17:18 am »
+1
Thankyou K.Smithy,
Yeah I might change to looking into time dilation instead and the twins paradox. Really appreciate your help and might be back with a few question later into next week.
Thanks,
Will

wlayton

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Re: Year 12 IA3 - Physics - Research Question Assistance
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2021, 04:21:35 pm »
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Following up :D,
I've now go my RQ and have been doing research on it for the past week or so. I believe our teacher wants us to have between 2 and 3 main sources of information. I have attached the two main articles ill be using. I have read through them and they are over my head quite a bit, however i have been reading papers around them to understand them more which is quite the chore. I was curious if anyone could help me understand the graphs on them. As I can't tell if they'd be good to incorporate into my discussion.
Kind Regards,
Will
P.S. any other assistance in interpreting/understanding the document would be appreciated.