Measurement of Gravitational Time Dilation: An Undergraduate Research Project
Physics Education
2017-10-11 v2
Abstract
General relativity predicts that clocks run more slowly near massive objects. The effect is small---a clock at sea level lags behind one 1000 m above sea level by only 9.4 ns/day. Here, we demonstrate that a measurement of this effect can be done by undergraduate students. Our paper describes an experiment conducted by undergraduate researchers at Colorado College and the United States Air Force Academy to measure gravitational time dilation. The measurement was done by comparing the signals generated by a GPS frequency standard (sea-level time) to a Cs-beam frequency standard at seven different altitudes above sea level. We found that our measurements are consistent with the predictions of general relativity.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1707.00171,
title = {Measurement of Gravitational Time Dilation: An Undergraduate Research Project},
author = {M. Shane Burns and Michael D. Leveille and Armand R. Dominguez and Brian B. Gebhard and Samuel E. Huestis and Jeffery Steele and Brian Patterson and Jerry F. Sell and Mario Serna and M. Alina Gearba and Robert Olesen and Patrick O'Shea and Jonathan Schiller},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.00171},
year = {2017}
}