Thursday 1 September 2016

Radio Speed


"Sue Perkins will be missing from tonight's Great British Bake Off episode." Good grief, it's amazing what passes for  news on the BBC website these days. As of last night that was the 2nd most read news item.

Found a wooden box in our bookcase yesterday and opened it to find this. I'd never seen it before and asked Hay what it was. She said it was her mother's PYE radio which she'd had since the age of 16, so it must date from 1955, the year of my birth.


As you can see, the inside of the lid is the speaker. Must see if I can get it working. 

Here's an interesting factiod for you. Speed equals distance over time. If you were to travel at the speed of light from say the sun to the Earth, relativistic time dilation says that time stands still at lightspeed (as evidenced by particles not decaying when boosted to lightspeed and clocks slowing down at high velocity - GPS signals compensate for that), thus if distance is 90 odd million miles and (for you) the time is zero, withing your reference frame you'd appear to travel the distance instantaneously - or at infinite speed, and be some 8 minutes younger than those on Earth.

Stop press: it's the aerial in the lid, not the speaker...


3 comments:

Roger said...

Frame aerial. Be careful if you switch it on because the waxed paper capacitors will have dryed up and will disintegrate under power. Best to run it up with a variac if you have one.

Roger said...

Frame aerial. Be careful if you switch it on because the waxed paper capacitors will have dryed up and will disintegrate under power. Best to run it up with a variac if you have one.

Chairman Bill said...

No idea what a variac is. Flux capacitors? Can I travel back in time with it then?