Preliminary study of simple methods to get the average speed using a smartphone's light sensor

Abstract

This paper reports on the result of a preliminary study of utilization of a smartphone ambient light sensor for get the average speeds of motion along a straight line based on experiments. We attach a smartphone to a dynamics train that travels across multiple light sources where the distance is already set. The main source of this experiment is obtained from the luminosity curve obtained from free android applications. From the curve, we can get position information against time. So from the data we can get the value of average speed. Then the use of the smartphone light sensor in physics experiments can be done easily and fun.