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News: Speed guns are being widely used by law enforcement officials to monitor traffic speed.
About Speed Gun
- It is a device to measure the speed of a moving object without having to be in contact with the object.
- It was originally developed during World War 2 for military use.
- Functioning of a Speed Gun
- It consists of a radio transmitter and a receiver.
- The transmitter emits radio waves, which the person using the speed gun can direct at the object.
- The receiver then captures the waves reflected by the object back in the direction of the speed gun.
- The speed gun employs the Doppler Effect to calculate the speed of the object based on the frequency difference between the transmitted and reflected waves.
- Application: Speed guns are widely used by law enforcement officials to monitor traffic speed, by coaches to measure the performance of their athletes and in other industries that require motion tracking.
- Limitations:
- Radio Waves tend to diverge as they move through the air, producing inaccurate speed readings.
- A continuous wave reading may produce faulty readings due to interference from multiple vehicles.
- Due to these limitations, LIDAR speed guns are being promoted as they use laser light instead of radio waves.
- Laser light has very low divergence, offering better targeting.
