October 4th, 2007 @ 8:00 am
Do try this at home
Do try this at home - Times Online
This is where the chocolate comes in. The distance between the globs of molten chocolate is half the wavelength of the microwaves in your oven, so double the measurement you have taken of the gap between the molten globs to find the microwave wavelength. In the New Scientist microwave oven the distance between the globs of molten chocolate was 6cm, so the wavelength in our 2.45 GHz oven is 12cm. To calculate the speed of light in centimetres a second you need to multiply this wavelength by the frequency of the microwaves: 12×2,450,000,000 = 29,400, 000,000, which is near to the true speed of light of 29,979,245,800cm a second (or 299,792,458 m per second).
thats kinda awesome. They also have an explanation as to why spaghetti breaks into 3+ pieces instead of 2.
