The Speed of Light Measured with a Pulsed Laser
A laser is pulsed at 1 MHz, and the laser light pulses are bounced off of a mirror and then detected by a fast detector. The time between the sending and recieving pulses is used to time the transit of light. The answer is 2.99792458×1010 cm/s, what is the question?
Important Information Concerning the Speed of Light Experiment
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For this experiment only, everyone will do the same experiment during the same week, and groups can include up to 4 students.
You will need to write all your reports following the posted lab practice and report writing procedure: Recording data and writing reports.
Experiment Information
- Experiment instructions
- "A tabletop experiment for the direct measurement of the speed of light," Aoki, K., and Mitsui, T., Am. J. Physi. 76, 812-815 (2008). This paperdescribes the apparatus that we adapted for our setup.
- Notes on data analysis and experimental uncertainty, by David Pengra and L. Thomas Dillman.
- An Excel spreadsheet that will calculate a fit line using full weighting of uncertainties. Also calculates reduced χ2: LSQFit.xls. From the Methods of Experimental Physics course at the University of Minnesota (written by Kurt Wick).
- Lab precautions, recording data and writing reports
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