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Measure The Speed Of Light With Your Microwave

Posted by Hemos on from the godiva-or-hershey dept.

maddmike writes "There is a very interesting article on About.com that shows how to measure the speed of light using your microwave to melt chocolate. "

1 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Measure the frequency of your microwave instead by boa13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Summary of the method used in the article:

    * Slightly melt chocolate chips in your microwave
    * Measure distance between melted spots
    * This gives you (half) the wavelength of your oven
    * Multiply by the frequency of your oven, you get the speed of light

    That's certainly interesting, but guess what? Many scientists have done better (and much more expensive) measures, so we already know the speed of light quite well.

    What we might not know as well is the frequency of your oven. So I suggest you reverse the above formula, and you measure the frequency of your oven (not always printed on the back, as the article admits) this way.