Measuring The Speed Of Light

Have you ever wondered how fast does light travel ? We can measure the speed of light in our home using just our home appliances through a simple(and tasty !!) activity.

Item List

For this you will be needing:
1. A microwave 
2. A bar of chocolate ( eggs work too!!)
3. A ruler 
4. and a calculator.

Principle

A Microwave oven as the name suggests uses microwaves to heat our food. These microwaves are a part of the Electro-Magnetic spectrum and lie between Radio Waves and Infrared Waves. 

 
 The interesting part is that these micro waves travel at the same speed as that of light. Viola!
Calculating the speed of these micro waves would give us the speed of light. Now thankfully we have a handy equation to calculate this :- 
      Speed of Microwaves (Light) = Wavelength ( Ξ»)  x  Frequency ( Ξ½) 
       
Experiment

Frequency - You may find this at the back of your microwave (usually 2450 MHz) or in the user manual of your microwave. 

Wavelength - Now to figure out the wavelength, first remove the rotating base plate of the microwave oven and heat the chocolate bar for about 10-15 seconds on low heat. Removing the base plate will help prevent even heating. 



Where the crest and troughs of microwaves hit the chocolate their will be uneven heating. Certain areas will be better heated(more soft) and the other areas will be less heated (hard). 
Measure the distance between two nearest heated chocolate portions/ melted spots and this will give half the wavelength.  


The half wavelength obtained is approx 6 cms and double this to obtain wavelength as 12 cms.
Now, insert these figures in our equation and obtain the speed of light!!

     Speed of light = 2,450,000,000 Hz x 12 cm  
                            = 29,400,000,000 cm/s or 
                            = 2,94,000,000 m/s or 2.94 x 108 m/s

For the above activity you can refer this video as well 
 
    
                            
Arduino, Unity, Cinematography

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