1
answer
0
watching
295
views
26 Nov 2019
Time standards are now based on atomic clocks. A promising second standard is based on pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars (highly compact stars consisting only of neutrons). Some rotate at a rate that is highly stable, sending out a radio beacon that sweeps briefly across Earth once with each rotation, like a lighthouse beacon. Pulsar PSR 1937+21 is an example; it rotates once every 1.55780644887275 ± 3 ms, where the trailing ±3 indicates the uncertainty in the last decimal place (it does not mean ±3 ms). (a) How many times does PSR 1937+21 rotate in 20.0 days? (b) How much time (in s) does the pulsar take to rotate 5.00 × 106 times and (c) what is the associated uncertainty, in s?
Time standards are now based on atomic clocks. A promising second standard is based on pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars (highly compact stars consisting only of neutrons). Some rotate at a rate that is highly stable, sending out a radio beacon that sweeps briefly across Earth once with each rotation, like a lighthouse beacon. Pulsar PSR 1937+21 is an example; it rotates once every 1.55780644887275 ± 3 ms, where the trailing ±3 indicates the uncertainty in the last decimal place (it does not mean ±3 ms). (a) How many times does PSR 1937+21 rotate in 20.0 days? (b) How much time (in s) does the pulsar take to rotate 5.00 × 106 times and (c) what is the associated uncertainty, in s?
Casey DurganLv2
7 Apr 2019
