The Speed of Light: Historical Perspective and Experimental Findings

TRENT SCARBOROUGH AND BEN WILLIAMSON
FIGURE 3: GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF RESULTS
In the above graph, the light grey line represents the
known value for the speed of light, .2997 meters per nanosecond
(m/ns) equivalently 2.997 x 10 8 m/s. The dark grey line represents
the slope of our values obtained, .2956 m/ns or 2.956 x
10 8 m/s. The black t-shaped lines coming from the dark grey
line represent a plus or minus 5% value. Our obtained value is
only 1.36% off from the current measurement.
SUMMARY
Every major scientist from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to
Michelson has pondered on the speed of light. During our history
research, we discovered that there have been major attempts
by a vast number of scientists in order to determine the speed of
light. The value of the speed of light is crucial to Einstein’s theory
of special relativity. The theory states that space and time are
not a constant but; the speed of light never varies, regardless of
time or space. The phenomena of time dilation and length contraction
cannot be explained without an accurate value for the
speed of light. We chose to do two of these experiments and
compare our results with today’s accepted value. While one of
our experiments was a modern interpretation of an old experiment,
the other experiment used modern standards and both
were accurate in determining the speed of light to within 2% of
the currently accepted value of 2.99792 x 10 8 m/s.
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