Question

How does the Doppler effect aid police in detecting speeding motorists?

Answer 1

The radar unit sends out waves of invisible light at a specific frequency. some of the waves bounce off the vehicle and return back to the officer. The faster your relative motion, the larger the frequency shift. the unit then calculates your speed and displays it on a screen.

Further explanation :

The Doppler effect is used in some types of radar, to measure the velocity of detected objects. A radar beam is fired at a moving target — e.g. a motor car, as police use radar to detect speeding motorists — as it approaches or recedes from the radar source. Each successive radar wave has to travel farther to reach the car, before being reflected and re-detected near the source. As each wave has to move farther, the gap between each wave increases, increasing the wavelength. In some situations, the radar beam is fired at the moving car as it approaches, in which case each successive wave travels a lesser distance, decreasing the wavelength. In either situation, calculations from the Doppler effect accurately determine the car's velocity.

Because the doppler shift affects the wave incident upon the target as well as the wave reflected back to the radar, the change in frequency observed by a radar due to a target moving at relative velocity {\displaystyle \Delta v} is twice that from the same target emitting a wave:

∆f = 2(∆v)f0/c