How do the transmitter and receiver relate to the MW experiment?
Although there’s a lot of stuff folded in to MW (almost all the ideas in this course are connected to it somehow!), the really basic idea is to make a transmitter that creates em waves (of microwave frequency), and detect them with a receiver. Both transmitter and receiver are antennae. The transmitter is the antenna connected to the EB apparatus, and it creates em waves via electrons that zing back and forth in the antenna whenever a spark gives them a kick. The receiver is the other antenna you make, connected to your amplifier. Electrons in this receiver get pushed around by the electric fields of the microwave, and this small current gets amplified and you see its effect on the MMM. This is the basic idea behind radio, TV, cell phones etc, too!
