From the very good book Lightspeed: The Ghostly Aether and the Race to Measure the Speed of Light by John C H Spence. Funny if you know a little physics.
From the very good book Lightspeed: The Ghostly Aether and the Race to Measure the Speed of Light by John C H Spence. Funny if you know a little physics.
5 comments:
"Funny if you know a little physics. "
Always the problem with science jokes. You have to explain them to the non-scientists.
My 1st year physics class was in a large lecture room. After Professor Helmut Fritsche described the Michaelson-Morley experiment, he reached under the desk and brought out Michael-Morley's actual apparatus -- the one with the two rotating mirrors. It was smaller than I had imagined -- only a foot or two long.
Cheers
At the end of a detailed lecture on evolution my lecturer told each group about Ovis Hibernicus, the Irish Sheep.
It had four breeds.
Ovis Hibernicus Ascendus had shorter front legs and preferred to graze facing uphill.
Ovis Hibernicus Descendus had shorter hind legs and preferred to graze facing downhill.
Leavus had shorter left legs and grazed around the hill anticlockwise.
Dextrus had shorter right legs and grazed clockwise.
They tried breeding Ascendus with Dextrus. The lambs had short legs on opposite corners and fell over.
This was delivered entirely straight faced. Last student to get the joke bought the beer.
Hi David. Are you sure it wasn't a mockup? Here's a picture of the MM interferometer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment#/media/File:Michelson_morley_experiment_1887.jpg
David -
It's hard to be sure of anything that happened 57 years ago. My best memory is that the Professor said it was the actual apparatus.
Cheers
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