You are working in an accelerator laboratory. Your supervisor is designing a new experiment in which charged pions will be accelerated to high speeds. The half-life of the pion—that is, the time interval during which half of the pions will decay into other subatomic particles—is Δt1/2 = 2.60 ✕ 10−8 s.
In order to be assured that plenty of pions are available for study at the exit port of the accelerator, your supervisor wants the time interval during which the pions move over the experimental area at the exit port to be exactly the half-life of the pions as measured by the experimenters. The experimental area is of length
L = 13.4 m.
You need to determine to what speed (in units of c) the pions should be accelerated to meet your supervisor's requirements.