Walk to Rue au Mètre
A mere fifteen minute walk from our school lies a replica of one of several marble metre rules that were placed around Paris in the 18th Century. To complement discussions on standard units and measurements in Physics club we went on a short trip to “Rue au Mètre” where we compared our classroom metre rules with the 1791 standard.
We were all rather astonished that our lab metre rules came up a little short, 2.00 cm to be precise, compared with the 18th century standard. The only way to tell which is closest to a true metre is to measure the distance that electromagnetic waves travel in a vacuum in a/299792458th of a second – anyone up to the challenge?
