h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

how about 'exactly as with light'

Gif

A32231549 - How To Calculate The Speed Of Light In Your Kitchen

This thread is travelling far too fast for me to keep up

I am sooooooo glad I came to this entry after consensus had been reached.

Though of course you've not considered the bed-sit analogy, when your kitchen is also your bedroom.

Nice one SWL

They'd be sitting waves rather than standing waves McKay

"A London bus travelling at the speed of light could travel from London to New York and back fifty times in one second."
... no, not back. The distance from London to New York is 5,600 km, so it could do this distance 50 times (53 times to be exact). The journey there and back could only be done 26 times in a second.

Use commas in large numbers. 186000 should be 186,000. The same applies to all the large numbers.

"sends out energy as a wave, exactly as light does"
... should be
"sends out energy as a wave - the same sort of wave as a radio wave or a light wave"

"Some microwave ovens however, have a rotating emitter" ... put a comma after "ovens"

"where the wave was at its highest and lowest spot" ... should be "spots"

gives us the wavelength. In this case, 120 mm. ... should be
gives us the wavelength: in this case, 120 mm.

We now know how long the wave was, so now we need to know ... too many "now"

"in a second in the microwave oven" ... better as "per second in the microwave oven"

"294,000 km per second. Pretty close to the actual figure " ... should be:

"294,000 km per second: pretty close to the actual figure "

You appear to have omitted the instruction about eating the cheese.

How's this one going at the moment?

Oh, umm, yeah - I've got some tidying up to do

Nice Entry

Maybe you can mention from the beginning that you need a microwave oven equipped with a turntable? So if someone tries the experiment without reading through the Entry first, he might end up having grated the cheese for nothing.

Surely no one could be that careless over such high end science... I want to measure the speed of light in my kitchen, not count how many eggs I have, but actually measure the speed of light, but I can't be bothered to read the fairly short entry once through before I begin? Sounds unlikely.

Unless everyone in the UK has a laptop and a wireless network in their kitchens, or microwaves next to their computers for some reason...

Nor do I think anyone geeky enough to want to measure the speed of light in their kitchens is likely to struggle to think of a secondary use for some grated cheese. Toast, pizza, pour down throat, whatever...

Hmm.

I can't believe we don't have a cheese smiley. ? Bah.

Nevermind.

vp

without the ? Naaah.

Incidentally (and very out of date now), I never found the title misleading in the least - it seems clear enough that the 'in the kitchen' bit refers to measurement, not to the speed of light.



Still, the late specification of equipment seemed a bit untidy to me, a bit as if the author had forgotten about it and only remembered in mid-way.

Fair enough, I guess the addition of 'with a turntable' to the 'A microwave oven' bullet point isn't exactly going to wear the bbc servers out with excess text

Nice one, SWL.

I first saw this featured as a puzzle on the BBC4 panel game "Mind Games" a couple of years ago.

So, using this result, you can now derive the speed of cheese in a vacuum. (I'll leave that as an exercise for any students reading this)

Icy

OK, quite a few changes made. Grammar sorted (I hope) and a bit added in about ants that I think helps the layman visualise what is happening inside the oven. I've taken out the bit about re-assembling the oven as I feel it is a bit superfluous imo. I've yet to see a lab experiment end with instructions to replace all apparatus in the original positions.

Opinions please?

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Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Well, that's certainly a positive opinion. Well done.

+ ( - )!

Nice one!

Well done, once again

SWL