What Happens When Things Go Near the Speed of Light?

Advanced Analysis: Deriving the formula for g


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Use the mathematical form of the plot to derive g - understanding the constant.

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This should make a bit of sense. All of these events are productions and decays of the charmed meson. The time between creation and decay of a particle is called the lifetime. Because the lifetime of a type of particle is an identifying characteristic, all of these events have that one thing in common; the lifetime.

What is the average value of t?

t = 4.1598x10-13 ± 1.1014x10-13 s

This value should look familiar; it is the accepted value for the lifetime of the charmed meson! Do you recall using it earlier to predict decay lengths?

Actually the accepted value for the lifetime is 4.15x10-13 ± 0.04x10-13 seconds. The uncertainty in this number is much better than yours. The most important difference is the size of the dataset. The accepted value is based on thousands of data points; your value, only 18. More data yield more precise answers with smaller uncertainties.

So . . . now what?