Thursday, June 19, 2008

How To Measure the Speed of Light... Using Chocolate!

I have been a fan of the instructables web site for like forever. They are a quirky "how to" page that is part mythbusters and part demented Mr. Science. (yeah I watch way to much cable tv) by that I mean they are always building neat stuff from crap hanging around and in the process you learn some neat science!

So this week I come across how to measure the speed of light using chocolate and a microwave. Sound like BS? Nope! You take the chocolate, start warming it in the microwave, when you see melty places you stop and measure how far between the melties. Now you have the wave length. Next you have to find out the frequency of the microwave. It might be on the unit, or you might be able to look it up on the internet, if not, the instructable gives you ball parks for the average unit. Now knowing that speed is a factor of frequency and wave length times two, you simply do the math and vola!

You thought you couldn't do real science! And you get to eat your experiment!

<check out the instructable>

No comments: