- #1
Raziel2701
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Homework Statement
find the time it would take for a one-way trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri (4.10E13 km) . Assume that the spacecraft starts from rest, travels along a straight line, accelerates halfway at 1 g, flips around, and decelerates at 1 g for the rest of the trip.
Homework Equations
[tex]\Delta x = \frac{1}{2} a t^2[/tex]
The Attempt at a Solution
So I converted the distance to meters(4.10E16m) divided by two (2.05E16m) and plugged that into the equation above, as well as 9.8m/s/s for the acceleration and solved for time. Obtaining 2.05 years. So that corresponds to the first half of the trip. I then multiplied that time by two to obtain the full trip and got 4.1 years.
The answer is supposed to be 5.8 years. No relativistic effects are taken in consideration, this is an intro level physics class and I can't get the right answer when it seems to me that I'm doing the correct steps. What am I not seeing?
Thanks.