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Title: Can Anything Surpass the Speed of Light?
Purpose: To see if the light coming out of the headlights of a speeding car will beat the speed of light in a vacuum.
*note: Remember, this experiment is impossible to do.
Materials:
-A room with an infinite amount of space, also, the room is vacuumed, it contains no air or gas
-A car with headlights that are so strong, the light coming out can go an infinite amount of distance before the light fades out
Procedure:
1. First, turn on the headlights but not the car. The light travelling from the headlights should be travelling at 299 972 kilometres per second.
2. Now, turn on the car and drive it straight so the speed of the car is going about 5 meters per second, or about 18 kilometres per hour.
3. When you hit 18 kilometres per hour, turn on the headlights.
Observations:
When the car wasn’t moving and the headlights were turned on, the light coming from the headlights should go at a speed of 299 792 kilometres per second. However, when the car was going at 5 meters per second, and the headlights were turned on, the light should of went faster. This is because the light coming from the headlights is travelling at 299 792 km/s away from the headlights. However, the headlights are moving too because they are attached to the car, which is going at 5 meters per second, or 18 kilometres per hour. This means that the light coming out of the headlights should be travelling at 299 792.005 kilometres per second, because the headlights are also travelling too. Look at the diagrams below to see and understand why the light should be faster when it is coming out of a headlight attached to a speeding car.
Conclusion:
When light is shone from headlights of a speeding car, it should go faster. However, this experiment is impossible to do, so it is not sure if light can really go faster then 299 972 kilometres if it is shown from the headlights of a car. However, Lijun Wang, from NEC, claims he has done an experiment in which broke the speed limit of light. Lijun Wang and his team of researchers shot a light beam through a transparent chamber filled with a gas called celsium. The light that came out of the chamber was said to have traveled up to 300 times faster then the speed of light in a vacuum, about 89 991 600 km/s. This could be, however, just an illusion, but scientists do not know for sure. It may be a few decades or a few hundred years before scientists and researchers can figure out how to beat the speed of light.
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