Relationship between Michelson & Morley (1887) table and figure

September 18, 2017 11:56 AM

I'm trying to understand Michelson & Morley (1887), and as part of this I'm trying to reproduce their figure 6 from the data in the table. I do not understand how they relate.

Although the table and figure both show 9 data points (at noon and in the evening) I can't tell how the y axis relates to the numbers in the table. The last row at noon is consistently decreasing, and in the evening, increasing; yet, the lines in the figure move up and down.

What am I missing about the relationship? Is there some sort of de-trending or differencing, and why?

posted by Philosopher Dirtbike to Science & Nature (2 answers total)

Response by poster: (On further playing, it looks sort of like the linear trend is removed, but I'm unclear exactly how or why)
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 12:32 PM on September 18, 2017

Best answer: According to the Figure 2 caption and the bottom of page 6 in this paper, linear drift due to thermal effects was removed from the data in the MM experiment to generate their figure 6.
posted by doctord at 6:46 PM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]