You have an assistantship with a math professor in a future world where space travel is common and spacecraft regularly achieve near-light speeds. A spacecraft has taken of recently to carry individuals to colonize an Earth-like planet around a nearby star. Your professor, who remains on Earth, is teaching the students on the spacecraft via the future version of distance learning. It is time for the students on the spacecraft to take a math exam. The professor wishes the students to have a time interval Δtp = 2.00 h to complete the exam, so just as the spacecraft passes Earth on its last trip around the Sun at its constant cruising speed of 0.960c, she sends a signal to the proctor to have the students begin the exam. Knowing of your experience in physics courses, the professor asks you to determine the time interval through which she should wait before sending a radio signal to the departing spacecraft to tell the proctor to have the students stop working on the exam.
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Physics for Scientists and Engineers
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