Sparky: "...that does not seem to obey Newton?s laws, but has a set of law all it's own."
Sparky, it seems we are back to the scientific truth game. What you just wrote is patently untrue. Light obeys Newtons laws,semiclassically, in SR and in GR. As you noted below, with zero acceleration.
Good Grief Patti, have you never stepped outside of your lab? Light was one of the problem that lead Einstein to GR and then SR. The way it did not behave like matter is what bothered him.
Sparky:"So far as any experiment that we could think of, light always comes away with no mass and no inertia."
Patently untrue. The mass of a photon of frequency f is m=hf/c^2. And as such, it has inertia. Bending of light rays around a planet was one of the experiments that confirmed Einstein's GR. What a photon does not have is REST MASS, i.e. mass at zero speed.
Splitting hairs again are you? I was referring to mass in the Newtonian sense i.e. rest mass is implied. I am unaware of this simulated mass of a photon. Does it influence gravity; can it be counted as the dark mass we are looking for? If not then it is not mass but a simulated mass to solve inertia problems. When a laser hits a mirror and the light reverses direction, can we detect Newton?s for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? I think you might be referring to calculations on the bending of light in a gravity well as well. I have never been clear on SR on that. Does the gravity bend the light, or does the gravity bend time, which then bends the light? Chicken or egg thing I guess, but one solution does not require inertia for light.
"Think that your microwave can block the microwave photons from getting out of your oven by using a metal grid with holes in it."
Wrong. The microwave is a resonant cavity with absorbtion (absorption). The walls of the microwave and the air inside absorb the microwaves in the absence off anything inside.
The microwave is like a faraday cage with the energy being kept inside. From the website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage ?The door of a microwave oven has a screen built into the glass of the window. From the perspective of microwaves (with wavelengths of millimeters) this screen finishes a faraday cage formed by the oven's metal housing. Visible light, with wavelengths around half a micrometer, passes easily between the wires.?
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Sparky:"The photons must in some sense be larger than the holes. Increase the hole size and they can get out. The curious thing is if you leave the door cracked they will get out. They can get out though a very thin crack that is longer than their size."
It has no bearing on the size of the photons, this is a quite childish argument, not to mention incorrect. The phenomenology is comp[letely different.
On the contrary Patti, I have used faraday cages and my instrument uses the principle to shield itself from magnetic radiation. Large doors into such cages take care to make sure there is a metal-to-metal contact between the doors and their frames so that they don?t leak. This is usually a mesh of copper wire to electrically seal the space between door and door jam. (BTW, 2% silicon steel makes a good material for Faraday cages, though it is brittle. I?m a metallurgist remember?)
Sparky: "As the energy gets higher, the photons can get though smaller holes, but they get adsorbed easier."
See the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage again. Visible light being smaller does get though the holes.
Wrong again. The more energetic the photons, the lower the absorbtion (adsorption). At high energies for example, metals become transparent for photons,i.e. there is no absorption. Why do you think they use X-rays and gamma rays in airport security scanners for the luggage instead of visible light?
No Patti, I used a 200kv electrical x-ray to check castings for porosity. Indeed you crank it up to push more x-rays though up to a maximum of about 4.5 inches. It is not only a matter of power but of quantity. But if you want to send messages to subs under water, you use Elf, if you use a 800 mhz phone it has trouble getting though walls and won?t carry much further than a block with a clear path. The adsorption of energy depends on what it is going though as the electrons have preferential energy levels they like to adsorb. But the energy level has to equal or exceed the energy level for the jump to the next state. And photons close to the jump energy are very effective at being adsorbed. We fight that principle in readsorption in optical spectrometers all the time.
And oh, they use x-rays in airports because metal blocks x-rays very easily, thereby showing up as dark spots on a crt. Again it is the material that prefers to adsorb certain levels of energy as the electron levels can easily jump at x-ray energy levels. Of course it is a lot more complex than that. But each material can be opaque to frequencies it can easily adsorb.
Yes there are exceptions because it is a complex process. Neutrinos have a very small capture cross-section and get though almost everything, including this planet. It is often hard to make a blanket statement that covers every exception. But in general, higher frequencies are more frequently and easier blocked than lower ones.
Come on Patti, you see falsehoods where there are none. You search for things that are wrong, when they are right. I am an Engineer; I deal with the real world. The engineer?s motto is that theory is only good when there is a useful application. Science is my relaxation so I give scientists a break and appreciate their work.
Take care everyone, hang loose, I'm traveling this week: Quebec and Indiana...
