Data

Here the accuracy of our data was limited by our ability to read the rising edge of the incoming pulse from the photo-detector. We were able to make decent approximations for the rising edge of our incoming pulse when the time scale of our oscilloscope was set to \(40ns\) and the voltage scale was set to its minimum value. As well careful alignment of optical equipment such that the laser directly illuminates the photo detector greatly improved our ability to read the rising edge of the incoming pulse. The distance for which we were able to make measurements in was also limited by the total range of times we could evaluate with our oscilloscope set at this specific time resolution, as well as the ability to maintain culmination of our beam. Admittedly more measurements could have been made at intermittent distances to alleviate improper evaluation do to random error and to improve analysis by best fit method. The slope of the graph below gives our best guess for the value of the speed of light with data points marked as the change in distance from the first placement of the mirror and the associated change in time for the function generator to receive a pulse compared with the pulse received from the original placement of the mirror. Our weighted best fit was obtained by utilization of the scipy.optimize package of python and the standard deviation of our best estimate was taken as the square root of the covariance also obtained with the scipy.optimize package.