Q:

Michelson rotating mirror experiment

Could someone explain the calculation required to answer this question. It is from a text book and the answer is recorded as 585Hz but I cannot replicate the answer.

In 1931 Michelson used a rotating prism with 32 faces to measure the time for light to travel through a 1.6km evacuated tube to a distant mirror and back. From his results he calculated that the speed of light is 299774000 m/s.
Assuming the prism is rotated by only one face during the time of flight of light calculate the rotation frequency of the prism.

Is the book incorrect or am I?
My attempt:
$(1/(1600/299774000))/32=5855\:\mathrm{Hz}$ which is suspiciously similar to the suggested answer 585Hz. But then I remembered about the round-trip (3200m) which threw all the numbers again.

A:

If I enter your numbers I get 585,49 Hz, so I think you've just missed a zero when you entered it in your calculator :)
Regarding the 1.6 km or 3.2 km etc, maybe the problem-designers missed it?
Here is a description of the original experiment with the mile-long tube, but there it seems as if the beam bounces several times back and forth in the tube so maybe neither total length is correct.. 
Edit: as noted in the comment thread, the book made two errors, both the dual time of the roundtrip and the number of light bounces per face. I was off by a factor of 10 above when I wrote that I got 585 Hz, I also got the 5855 Hz. 

