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sip SUMMER 2013 5/7/13 08:38 Page 23 SPEED National Science and Engineering Week Seminar on Thursday 21st March HOW TO MEASURE SPEED Dr Michael de Podesta MBE National Physical Laboratory Viewing the world through over 18 orders of magnitude! The ‘clock’ is stopped by the the lens of precision Shown as dots are the speed of first runner breaking a beam of measurement brings our (a) sprinters, (b) bullets, (c) infrared light shone across the scientific vision into sharp focus. neutrinos, (d) bridges, (e) finish line. This records the It allows us to see clearly the continents and (f) sound. We winning time but does not beautiful patterns in nature, and will look in turn at how each of detect who has won! This is to compare them with our these speeds is measured. determined by a ‘photo-finish’ expectations – and so refine our system of beautiful ingenuity. A The timing of a sprint race is model of reality. Measurement is camera captures a picture of the easy to understand. A starter a simple idea but one which is finishing line – just the finishing fires a gun and the ‘bang’ is central to our scientific world line –1000 times each second. supposed to start the race fairly. view. The images of the finishing line However, sound travels through are then stitched together to So let us look at precision air at approximately 340 metres Michael de Podesta considering the make an image that looks like a measurement of speed. We per second so that a runner on possibilities of the NPL-Cranfield distorted photograph, but is in acoustic resonator – the most describe speeds as ‘fast’ or the far side of a 10 metre fact a technical record revealing accurate thermometer in the world. ‘slow’, but these assignations are running track would hear the the time at which each athlete anthropocentric. By ‘fast’ we gun approximately 0.030 crossed the line. mean some measurable change seconds later than the runner on has happened in a ‘heartbeat’ or a ‘blink of the eye’. And by ‘slow’ Measurement is the . difficulty in accepting that we mean something which comparison of an unknown shows only a small change in a quantity with a standard continents move . ‘long’ time, perhaps one ‘year’, amount of that quantity. So one orbit of the Sun, or a when we weigh 250 grams of the near side of the track. Such Bullets are faster than ‘lifetime’ (hopefully) one flour to make a cake, we are a gap – 30 milliseconds – is the athletes but they are still timed hundred orbits of the Sun. comparing the mass of flour difference between winning and photographically. Cameras not- with the mass of the But we see phenomena losing in many races. For this so-different from those international prototype of the taking place with a vast range of reason, the starting ‘pistol’ is commonly used to capture kilogram. When an engineer speeds. Things which appear now electronic, and it triggers a movies at 30 pictures per measures the temperature of instantaneous to humans are sound which is played from a second can be ‘super-charged’ steam to be 337°C, they are just ‘very fast’, and we find that loudspeaker directly behind to capture movies at up to one comparing the temperature of tiny differences in ultra-fast each runner. This ‘pistol’ also million frames a second. But the steam with the speeds can be of profound starts ‘the clock’. each image needs lots of light to temperature of the triple point significance. Similarly processes allow the passage of the bullet of water. This simple idea, which are slow enough can when applied with ingenuity appear to be stationary. But and thoroughness, transforms precision measurement can our vision of the world. reveal even the slowest of motions – and the results can again be of the most profound significance. The figure shows the range of speeds which are significant for human beings – a range of . tiny differences can be of profound significance . Science in Parliament Vol 70 No 3 Summer 2013 21 sip SUMMER 2013 5/7/13 08:38 Page 24 . brings our scientific vision into sharp focus . to be recorded. It is at this point However, only 0.000 000 000 – where the apparently 000 016% of the neutrinos instantaneous pulse of a camera were detected (16111). flash appears as a slowly Nonetheless, instead of taking brightening and fading light that 2.436801 milliseconds to reach we truly leave the realm of the detector – they took just speed that is appreciable to 2.436741 milliseconds. humans. In the end this discrepancy was resolved by the discovery of a loose cable which delayed a signal by seventy nanoseconds in a way which no one had considered possible. But the lesson of this experiment is that precision experiments test our expectations of the world. It is A colour-coded photograph of two concrete components on a bridge only because of precision showing that the slab on the left (purple) has moved approximately 7 mm And so to the timing of with respect to the slab on the right. neutrinos, possibly the oddest measurement that anyone particles humans have dared to check our expectations will realise that bridges move all be quickly detected. This is discovered. They have a lower that nothing can travel faster the time. And temperature simpler and cheaper than mass than even the electrons than light. And if they had been changes cause bridges to installing and monitoring arrays which whizz around every atom right, the textbooks would have change shape too. Both of strain gauges and allows the in the universe. Neutrinos had to be re-written, and our vibrations and environmental detection of movement in interact so weakly with ordinary conception of the entire changes cause bridges and unexpected places. universe would have changed. other civil engineering matter that they routinely travel We appreciate that bridges So, although that didn’t happen, constructions to change over through the Earth without move, but the idea that that is the power of precision time – something which is of anyone noticing. As a student I continents can move is more measurement – to make, or obvious interest to engineers wrote an essay on the breath- challenging. And the story of break, our most strongly-felt concerned with the safety of taking experiment in which how we came to understand convictions about the world. such structures. neutrinos were first detected! that not only can they move, but Now we can time neutrinos So let us now consider Once again photography that they are still moving now is routinely. Recently it appeared something at the opposite end comes to our aid. Photographs no less astounding. From early as though neutrinos were of Figure 1 – something we taken from precisely the same suspicions based on the shapes travelling faster than 299 792 generally consider to stationary: location days, months or years of the facing coast of Africa and 458 metres per second – the Bridges. However, if you have apart can detect the slow America; through research speed at which light travels ever stood on a motorway motion of structures – a few showing matching rock and through a vacuum. bridge while a lorry passes you millimetres a year of motion can fossil types; to our modern The experiment in which this theories of plate tectonics. This appeared to happen is complex. gives us a real insight into how Protons (ionised hydrogen science advances. atoms) were accelerated in The fundamental difficulty in Switzerland and fired into a accepting that continents move target which emitted neutrinos. is because their motion is so The beam of protons was slow compared with a human vaguely pointed towards the lifetime – and the moving parts Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, are so large compared with some 730.53461 kilometres human perceptions. There is no away, a distance known with an way we could become directly uncertainty of 20 cm. Over three aware of this motion. Or so it years approximately seemed. 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 neutrinos were emitted in well- Radio telescopes listen to timed bunches. This is a periodic signals from rotating stars called pulsars. A beam of number so large that it makes The path taken by neutrinos fired from CERN towards the Gran Sasso the UK national debt look small! Laboratory in Italy. radio waves from such a star 22 Science in Parliament Vol 70 No 3 Summer 2013 sip SUMMER 2013 5/7/13 08:38 Page 25 described earlier, sound travels sound in a gas can enable a . sound travels through a gas at through a gas at quite a measurement of its temperature. comfortable rate. Fast enough For the last 6 years, my a comfortable rate . that we are not conscious of the colleagues and I at NPL have delay as someone speaks, but sweeps past the Earth every as the continents on which they been working to make such a slow enough that we can hear second, and these signals are sit are moving. measurement. Our ‘echoes’ in large rooms. What is analysed by radio telescopes measurements – the most around the Earth. When the The movement is slow – often not appreciated is that the accurate ever – will enable a signals from widely separated typically 20 mm per year or one speed of sound in a gas is new definition of the units of radio telescopes are compared, tenth the speed at which hair directly proportional to the temperature (the kelvin and the a small adjustment must be grows – but it is real and can be average speed with which the degree Celsius) in the near made for the delay as the beam monitored week by week.