{"id":325,"date":"2010-04-16T18:59:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T17:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=325"},"modified":"2010-07-02T18:43:35","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T17:43:35","slug":"investigating-the-speed-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"Investigating the speed of light."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"270\" src=\"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wolflight.jpg\" alt=\"wolflight\" title=\"wolflight\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wolflight.jpg 350w, https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wolflight-300x231.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The distances in space are far too large to be measured in kilometres. It is a bit like marking the road distances in millimetres.<br \/>\nInstead astronomers use the <strong><em>light year<\/strong><\/em>. The light year is the distance a beam of light travels in one year.<\/p>\n<p>You can use the fantastic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/\">Wolframalpha<\/a> website to explore the distances in space and on Earth in terms of how quickly a beam of light will take to cover he distance.<br \/>\nAll you have to do is type into the box <strong><em>light year<\/strong><\/em>. You will find the distance a light year in metres.<\/p>\n<p>Try typing in:<br \/>\n<strong><em>Glasgow to Paris<\/strong><\/em>. You can equate the distance in terms of how long it would take light to travel this distance = 2.99milliseconds. So we could say that Paris is about 3 milli-light-seconds from Glasgow.<br \/>\nTry typing in <strong><em>Earth to Mars<\/strong><\/em> you`ll find that the distance between Earth and Mars is 9.6 light-minutes.<\/p>\n<p>You can download a special worksheet which you can use with Wolfram Alpha.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.helpmyphysics.co.uk\/lightspeed.pdf\">Download worksheet here. (pdf)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/\">WolframAlpha <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Have fun converting distances into lightyears, lightminutes or even lightmilliseconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The distances in space are far too large to be measured in kilometres. It is a bit like marking the road distances in millimetres. Instead astronomers use the light year. The light year is the distance a beam of light travels in one year. You can use the fantastic Wolframalpha website to explore the distances [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-physics","category-physics-class","category-standard-grade-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpmyphysics.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}