What is a Radar Gun?
A radar gun is a portable device used to measure the speed of something, especially a baseball or moving vehicle. Especially, radar guns are used by police to catch speeders and baseball coaches to measure the velocity of a pitcher’s throw. A typical radar gun can be bought online or in a sports supply store for about $100 USD (US Dollars). Radar guns were invented in 1954 by Bryce Brown, and first used by patrolman Leonard Baldy in Chicago. A radar gun works by bouncing radar off the object to be measured and using the Doppler effect to infer its speed. As such, they are also referred to as Doppler radars. You might be familiar with the Doppler effect by listening to a passing train or car — especially with a train whistle, it sounds more high-pitched as the train is approaching, and becomes low pitch as the train is departing, despite the fact that the pitch of the whistle is objectively constant. The change in pitch is caused by the motion of the object emitting the noise. When the
A radar gun or speed gun is a device used to measure the speed of different objects. It might by a traffic officer to clock a vehicle’s speed. Or perhaps a TV network is using it to clock a baseball pitcher’s fast ball. The applications vary, but the unit works by applying the Doppler effect to discover how fast something is going. Basically, the unit sends out a signal and looks at the return signal. It compares the frequency of the returned signal to the transmitted one, and the difference can be “converted” into a speed.
