Light is quick. It travels at a speed of 299 792 458 metres per second. A team of researchers at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have just created a camera that can capture light actually moving and replay it as a slow motion movie!
The camera can take 1 trillion images a second! That's 1 000 000 000 000 pictures each second! Or put another way the camera takes a picture every 0.000 000 000 001 seconds! In this video they explain how the camera works and you can see an example of a pulse of light travelling through a plastic bottle and lighting up the end cap in slow motion!
Not only is this amazing, I thought we could do some interesting maths with this.
How far does light travel between each picture that is taken?
Well speed is equal to distance travelled divided by the time taken. If we rearrange this formula we get that distance travelled is equal to speed multiplied by the time taken. Therefore the distance light travels between each image the camera takes is:
Distance = speed X time
Distance = 299 792 458 X 0.000 000 000 001
Distance = 0.000 299 792 458 m
Since we have calculated the answer in metres if we multiply it by 1000 we will convert it into mm. Rounded to 1 decimal place we see that the distance the light travels between each picture the camera takes is just 0.3mm! That's just the thickness of two human hairs!
Here are some more slow motion videos showing light travelling over/ through objects:
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