Rotating Table Pulsar
Safety Warnings
Warning: Flashlight Beam Caution
Purpose
Models a pulsar's lighthouse effect using rotating flashlights. Students learn that pulsars emit continuously but appear to pulse because their beamed radiation sweeps past Earth's line of sight — a geometric effect, not actual pulsation.
Figure 1:
The rotating table setup with mounted flashlights simulates the beamed radio emission from a pulsar's magnetic poles, which sweep through space as the neutron star rotates.