Original Title:

How to weigh a galaxy

Keywords:

demonstrator Galaxy mass doppler effect rotation curve

Description:

The teaching activities consist in measuring the mass of a spiral galaxy, viewed edge-on, using the same procedure employed by astronomers. It is surprising how just a few measurements and the knowledge of a few fundamental laws of physics make it possible to weigh the largest and most distant objects in the Universe, despite the impossibility of carrying out direct measurements. The simple measurement proposed here makes it possible to obtain experimental evidence for the existence of the famous dark matter