Speed of light in air
- how light speed is measured
- how light speed was first measured
- how is the speed of light measured today
- how is the speed of light measured physics
Speed of light per hour
Speed of sound.
How were the speed of sound and the speed of light determined and measured?
Chris Oates, a physicist in the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), explains.
Despite the differences between light and sound, the same two basic methods have been used in most measurements of their respective speeds.
The first method is based on simply measuring the time it takes a pulse of light or sound to traverse a known distance; dividing the distance by the transit time then gives the speed. The second method makes use of the wave nature common to these phenomena: by measuring both the frequency (f) and the wavelength () of the propagating wave, one can derive the speed of the wave from the simple wave relation, speed = f×.
(The frequency of a wave is the number of crests that pass per second, whereas the wavelength is the distance between crests). Although the two phenomena share these measurement approaches, the fundamental differences between light and sound have led to very different experimental implementations, as well as differ
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