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please explain michelson moreley experiment in intricate details. it just doesn't seem to get into my head

please explain michelson moreley experiment in intricate details. it just doesn't seem to get into my head 

Grade:Upto college level

1 Answers

SAGAR SINGH - IIT DELHI
878 Points
13 years ago

Dear rahul,

Michelson had a solution to the problem of how to construct a device sufficiently accurate to detect aether flow. The device he designed, later known as an interferometer, sent a single source of white light through a half silvered mirror that was used to split it into two beams travelling at right angles to one another. After leaving the splitter, the beams travelled out to the ends of long arms where they were reflected back into the middle on small mirrors. They then recombined on the far side of the splitter in an eyepiece, producing a pattern of constructive and destructive interference based on the spent time to transit the arms. If the Earth is traveling through an ether medium, a beam reflecting back and forth parallel to the flow of ether would take longer than a beam reflecting perpendicular to the ether because the time gained from traveling downwind is less than that lost traveling upwind. The result would be a delay in one of the light beams that could be detected when the beams were recombined through interference. Any slight change in the spent time would then be observed as a shift in the positions of the interference fringes. If the aether were stationary relative to the sun, then the Earth's motion would produce a fringe shift 4% the size of a single fringe.

 

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Askiitians Expert

Sagar Singh

B.Tech, IIT Delhi

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