How to measure the speed of light at your university with a dinner budget

Abstract

Although the idea of using a modulated laser signal to measure the speed of light is not new, most methods found in international literature are still expensive, as a result of either the instruments or the circuits used. In the present approach, we provide an alternative that requires equipment that most universities own for their undergraduate programs, plus some inexpensive circuitry, allowing the students of any undergraduate physics laboratory course to obtain an eight-point graph using relatively small distances (such as corridors), combining a low budget with an accurate result that is equally as good as those achieved by kits available on the market.