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Michelson and Morley
Albert Michelson
Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley were two American scientists, in 1887 they attempted to measure the motion of the earth relative to the ether by using wave interference. ...
Edward Morley
As the Earth was supposed to be moving through stationary ether, there should have been an ether resistance or ether wind. ... Michelson realised this and compared it to sound travelling through air and how sound is relative to the air. ... Michelson thought up a very clever idea to solve this problem and it was based on:
“Suppose we have a river of width w (say, 100 feet), and two swimmers who both swim at the same speed v feet per second (say, 5 feet per second). ... edu/lectures/michelson. ... Michelson’s idea was to race light like in the swimming race. ...
The challenge for Michelson and Morley was to devise an experiment that could demonstrate this.
The Experiment
Michelson and Morley’s aim was to measure the motion of the earth relative to the ether. Michelson and Morley built a Michelson interferometer, which essentially consists of a light source, a half-silvered glass plate, two mirrors, and a telescope. ...
Michelson and Morley were able to measure the speed of light by looking for interference fringes between the light that had passed through the two perpendicular arms of their apparatus. ...
A Simple Diagram of the experiment
Results
Michelson and Morley were expecting interference however once the two rays were compared there was no significant difference found between the two light rays.
Approximate Word count = 1275
Approximate Pages = 5.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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