Speed of light measurement using ping
We report on a very simple and inexpensive method for determining the speed of an electrical wave in a transmission line. The method consists of analyzing the roundtrip time for ethernet packets between two computers. It involves minimal construction, straightforward mathematics and displays the usefulness of stochastic resonance in signal recovery. Using basic electrical properties of category-five cable students may use their measurements to determine the speed of light in the vacuum to within a few percent.
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