Chapter 8, Problem 12PE

Professional Application

One hazard of space travel is debris left by previous missions. There are several thousand objects orbiting Earth that are large enough to be detected by radar, but there are far greater numbers of very small objects, such as flakes of paint. Calculate the force exerted by a 0.100-mg chip of paint that strikes a spacecraft window at a relative speed of $4.00\times {10}^3$ m/s, given the collision lasts $6.00\times {10}^{-8}$ s.