In my previous blog post, I discussed the basic TOF method for direct measurement of the speed of the light. In order to measure the time of flight accurately, we need to be able to both generate and detect very…
Speed of light c in air can be measured either directly or indirectly. There are many ways to infer c with indirect measurements. For instance, we can measure the propagation delay of a signal through a coaxial cable (or an…
In this blog post, I compared the rise time of four oscilloscope probes of various bandwidths using an avalanche pulse generator and a Tektronix 2465 300 MHz oscilloscope. The bandwidth of an oscilloscope probe is typically characterized using a network…
Avalanche transistors can be used to generate fast rise time pulses. Their usage in the hobby world was made popular following an application note (AN72) by Jim Williams and was further publicized via this EEVBlog video. Many people have built…