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Scattering geometry

In a frictionless hard-wall collision with a reflector so massive so that its recoil may be ignored, the angle of incidence of the particle to the reflector's surface will equal the angle of departure from the reflector's surface. Under these assumptions, compute the scattering angle tex2html_wrap_inline354 , as defined in the figure, for a particle hitting the reflector off-center, a distance b from the x-axis (b is called the ``impact parameter''). Now, solve explicitly for b to show that

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Hint: Depending upon how you approach this problem, you may need to make use of the trigonometric identity to simplify your expression(s),

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Prof. Tomas Alberto Arias
Thu Feb 6 11:34:49 EST 1997