STEM GROUP – November 2023 Write up
Today we had a talk from Chris Thorpe, this covered the topics below.
- What is light?
- Why is measuring it important?
- Ways to measure light:
- Properties of light
- Measuring the speed of light:
- Via Snell’s Law
- Microwave Method
- Interferometric
- Error Analysis.
So we used a bar of chocolate to work out the speed of light, by putting in the microwave for about a minute. Then measuring the distance between two of the areas that had changed. Using this measurement and the frequency of the microwave, we calculated a figure that is very close to the speed of light.
Result : 294,000,000 m/s -1 Actual : 299,792,458 m/s -1
Side on image of the interferometer.
This image of the interferometer should show a green dot on the paper on the wall. When a liquid is place infront of the laser, the beams trajectory changes due to the refraction of the liquid. .
The results for both experiments are shown here.
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