Reference no: EM133220499

Part II - Measuring distant objects

Parallax as explained in the pre-lab activity, is an interesting way of measuring the distance of an object by how much it appears to move when viewed against a much more distant background from one location, then another (the distance between the locations is called the baseline)

1. Move the pencil closer, to the 25 cm mark. What happens to the motion of the pencil now when you first close one eye and then the other? Can you quantify the difference? Is the motion apparently twice as much as it was before? Five times as much? Write your answers below.

2. Now move the pencil to about the 100 cm end of the paper meter stick or as far as it can get from your eyes. Again quantify the motion compared to when the pencil was at the 50 cm position.

3. The pencil at 50 cm is shown below. Explain how the drawing would change for the 100 cm and 25 cm situations. In particular describe how the parallax angle, the angle between the two sight lines, changes as the distance of the pencil from the eyes changes. Does the angle double when the distance doubles? To perform this task use the insert shapes feature in your word program and draw the appropriate lines in the figure below. Use different colors for the two cases.