Recent content by vielendank

Dear lord, I spent so much time trying to even conceive of how I would take into account those second order effects mathematically, and then the answer turned out to be (barely) two lines long... :eek: Thank you for your help!

D: Yes, that was silly of me. I think my difficulty is a more basic conceptual confusion, getting in the way of writing the conservation conditions. At the moment of maximum extension, there will be energy stored in the spring as well as the rest energy of the two masses, m1 and m2...

Homework Statement Hi all--humanist here. Now that the semester is over, I am taking the opportunity to (attempt to) self-study introductory SR. This is problem 12 in chapter 1 of Special Relativity by AP French. (1-12) A body of mass m1+Δm is connected to a body of mass m2-Δm by a spring of...