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Bingo and all I did was be mean and withhold that the beam is normally invisible

It's actually quite hard to make the beam show really brightly but there is a cheat you can do and put an RF exciter or Tesla slayer circuit on the electron gun to artificially ignite the gas along the path of the beam as well.

Bill S already knew that electrons are normally invisible
the reason I posted that electrons are invisible was for
your benefit ...

I believe that Bill S was asking WHY we could see the
light (the process)
and not whether or not the tube was designed so
that we could see the LIGHT.

several days go by after something is pointed out then you
jump in and start boasting about it as if you already knew it.

that's how you operate isn't it.

and then you say that you were waiting to see if someone
could figure it out first ... LOL

you remind me of Microsoft programmers who rely on
the user community to fix the problems in their operating systems then they incorporate those fixes into the OS as updates.

but you go one step further by laying claim on those fixes.



the light will spread in all directions , you can keep
your BS randomness.

how can light spread randomly in all directions.



could you explain that process in detail?

1) what does the electron collide with?

2) why is an electron lost?

3) where does the lost electron go?

3) why is a photon gained?

its very straight forward so you should have no troubles
explaining the entire process involved from electron
collision all the way through to photon emission.



when you do it for kiddies do you explain the process
or do you just allow them to view the show?

No Paul I am not here to convert you and I won't waste my time explaining things to some religious crackpot, who isn't remotely interested in understanding.

Get it through your head I really don't care what you believe, go and make up more Paul physics. You some how think I have to do this and I have to explain that ... sorry I don't and I don't discuss things this basic.

It's like Dinosaurs on the Ark I don't try and convert you I just find it funny and mildly amusing.

It you want to understand the process go read yourself the process is called gas ionization. It really is kiddie physics and there are plenty of details describing it on the internet without me wasting time.

I don't think you withheld that info , I think you just
didn't know about it.

so ... anyway now you agree that the photons do curve
with the electron beam... LOL

that should have been made evident in the video that showed
the green laser being curved by the magnet.

If that is what you believe it shows and that I agree then fine, no argument from me

I will accept that is what you believe just like those Dinosaurs on the Ark ..

Now can we get back to discussing stuff more intelligent than this as I am not remotely interested in Paul physics anymore than I am interested in Marosz physics. I may have to considering sacrificing a baby Jesus to see if we can purify the thread shortly.

not just yet , theres still a problem.

electrons are not light , only photons are light.

since the path of a photon can be curved by a magnet
as evidenced in the green laser video
then my thoughts on this is that as the electrons of the
atoms in the gas molecules become excited by photons
or electrons and then emit a photon , the emitted photons
are following the same curve that the electrons follow
resulting in a directed chain of excitation of the
electrons of atoms followed by the re-emission of photons
that follow the same electrically induced path .

this would maintain the focused beam of light that you do
see and would not result in a diffusion of light caused by undirected or unfocused light.

I think that you are thinking more about a chain of
random non directed non focused events causing the
light beam that we see.

the only basic difference between a old style residential incandesant light bulb and a electron gun is that the electron gun focuses the particles that exit the apparatus and the
old style light bulb doesn't.

focus is very important in lasers and crt tubes and electron guns .. without focus theres nothing but diffusion of particles whether they are photons or electrons.

definition = you don't know how things happen so you
cant explain how things happen.



if you wanted to pay the shipping of a thousand dinosaurs
from new York to hong kong would you ship tiny coffee cup
sized dinosaurs or fully grown dinosaurs?

so I'm thinking that a few cubic meters of space is all that
would be needed for the dinosaurs unless there were millions
of species that lived on land.

you really need to develop thought patterns to cope with
situations that you encounter.

I think I am supposed to care but about all of the above, but all I see is focused laughs.

Why don't you take up drawing kiddie drawings like Marosz that helps apparently

You are on ignore (TSTIW .. My 3rd commandment), I am not sure why you keep referencing things back to me.

Maybe the coloured electron beams were on the Ark with the Dinosaurs to keep the eggs warm

Think I'm too sarcastic? Watch me pretend to care ... moving on.

I cant think of a reason why you would want to start
caring , you haven't cared up to this point and I think
that as long as you can earn money from the BS science
you will blindly follow all the other non caring money
earners riding the magic show train.



there you go !!! although you didn't know it you just
experienced a thought process ... I never did mention
eggs ... you did.

cant beat that if they were available , why not because
eggs require no food until they hatch.

innovation.

Paul, wouldn't the photons you see have to be emitted roughly at right angles to the direction of travel of the electrons, or you would not see them. The paths they would follow would be from the point of interaction to your eye, not the curve of the electron beam.

Repeat spam count 3

Bill S seems interested discuss away with him. I don't need the spam or the responses back to me as I have already told you. You are either trolling or having comprehension issues as this would be the fifth or sixth time I have had to tell you that.

I think that what we see is the interaction or collision
of photons or electrons with the electrons of the gas atoms
and the light that we see is emitted by the collision
because of absorption and is visible in all directions like the light that is visible in all directions when the electrons pass through the glass of the tube while colliding with the electrons of the atoms in the glass tube.

the more I think about it the more light reminds me of a
radio wave or any other wave , why should light waves
be different from all other waves...

radio waves , sound waves , ocean waves ...
all radiate from the center in all directions

the only wave that we treat differently is light waves...

I may be wrong about that and I am tired I may read this
tomorrow and delete it ...

that would suggest that I was wrong though.

Im thinking Im right or close.

How are we treating light waves differently from others? What we are saying is that from their origin they radiate in all directions, but the only ones we see are those that propagate directly to our eyes.

The fact that successive emissions, in this case, come from points that lie on the curved trajectory of an electron beam does not mean that the light is being “bent”.

check



so wouldn't this mean that a single interaction between a
single electron in the electron beam and a single electron of a gas molecule generates an untold number of light photons
that propagate in all directions away from the point of
interaction?

there would be trillions upon trillions of different directions that the light can be viewed from depending on
the viewing distance from the viewed light so wouldn't
there need to be a photon of light traveling in each of those
trillions upon trillions of directions?

what do you think?

BTW , there is a set precise number of electrons that
can interact with the gas molecules in the tube.

but there is no set precise number of directions that the
light that we can see can be viewed from.

so Im thinking that what we are seeing is not multiple
interactions that cause a single photon emission but
single interactions that cause multiple photon emissions.

I don’t know enough about QM to say if these reactions are electron/electron interactions, or electron/atom interactions. I would suspect that the latter would be more likely.



That sounds reasonable. I think one of the difficulties is that we try to look at single electrons and single photons, but the chances are that the reactions would involve trillions of both. In fact they would need to in order to be visible.



Perhaps more likely, it would be multiple interactions, causing multiple emissions.

from my understanding or the way it has been explained to
me is that an electron collides with an electron of an atom
this results in either the loss of the impacted electron
causing the atom to become an ion or causes the impacted
electron to change its energy level and move to a higher
orbit around the atom.



what I was talking about was the result of a single interaction
between a electron of an atom and a electron in the electron
stream.

so that a single interaction would result in a unknown
or infinite amount of photons of light or a better
description might be that a photon or light wave flash
occurs and the infinite amount of photons propagate
in straight lines away from the origin of the flash
in every possible direction.



Im assuming that you were talking about the interactions of
more than a single electron in the above.
because I don't think that a single electron could react
more than once because of absorption.

I think that the negatively charged electron would
give its charge to the impacted electron or that's the
way I understand it.

so you must have been thinking about the interactions of
more than a single electron.

I had to use the word infinite because I couldn't think of a
better word...

WOW I am impressed boys you are actually working thru this ... hmm lets give you some hints.

Not a great drawing but does this help you think more about direction of emission (Why it might align like that)


Now you have worked out there can possibly be more than one photon so exactly how many might there be ... lets give hints

1.) Conservation of energy

2.) Each photon emitted will have an energy of E=hv
h = 6.626 x 10E-34 Js (this is Planks constant)
v = frequency of light emitted ... hint light color chart

3.) The electron kinetic energy when accelerated from an electron gun is fairly simple formula.

eV = 1/2mv^2

m = 9 x 10E-31kg (The mass of an electron)
e = 1.6 x 10E-19C (The standard electron charge)
V = Voltage of the electron gun (ohhh something you can change)
v = speed of the electron accelerated by that voltage.

Nominate the gun voltage (usually like 20KV) and you can calculate the electron velocity and hence it's Kinetic energy it has when it slams into the gas atom.

KE = 1/mv^2

Final hint: Look at energy of point 3 and ask how many of point 2 can it make given point 1 .. the answer isn't infinite

Prediction: If you got it all sorted there is an obvious prediction what will happen if you vary the electron gun voltage and you can test it

I suppose the math must be wrong then orac.

think of a transparent sphere with a radius of the furthest star that we can see.

now think about being on any point on the sphere
looking in at its center.

if the electron gun is located at the center of the sphere
and is switched on just long enough for a single flash to
occur.

and for now lets say that the radius of the sphere is 1 light year.

in 1 year the photons of light would reach you.
and you could see them from any point on the surface of
the sphere if you had a powerful enough telescope.

now how many photons are reaching the transparent sphere?

does the math tell you that the photons would not be
observable from any point on the sphere?

if so then how small would a sphere need to be in order
to observe the photons from any point on the sphere?

the sphere just gave me an idea , perhaps light is
like a infinitely expanding sphere and the thickness
of the light sphere is what we currently think of as
the length of a light wave.

when you think of a water wave as in
a tiny drop of water that is dropped onto a smooth water surface the result is waves that increase in radius and these waves are uniformly shaped and they travel outward in all horizontal directions on the waters surface from the center of where the water drop was dropped.

Now you have run across the conundrum

You are correct in your post but it was my best effort to make some sense classically of it. It was a shame you didn't do the bit about the number of photons which would have shown you another problem.

The problem was actually first considered with stars being so far away. If you put a star a long way away like 13.2 billion light years then if photons are like bullets at that distance you would only occasionally see the star on the rare time a photon comes in your specific direction. Even with the shear number of photons being emitted from a sun at that distance it would be true.

The question is usually innocently asked like this "As light from a star spreads out, do gaps form between the photons?"

The alternative is to turn light it into a wave but then you have problems with particle like behaviour mirrors, optical lense and lasers etc.

You have four choices
i) Light is a Particle-only
ii) Light is a Wave-only
iii) Light is a Both-particle-and-wave
iv) Light is Neither-wave-nor-particle

You may care to first search for "evidence light is a particle" and "evidence light is a wave" which will probably list relevant facts and experiments.

I actually can't help you with this problem and not because I don't want to but I don't know a solution in your physics. So you will need to work through the examples and experiments from your searches and see if your choice of solution works.

Three situations you may like to consider

i) How a mirror works especially with a wave only version rather than a photon (ray) version. Scientists do lots of lies and hand waving on this so look carefully at any answer (esp drawings) and it may pay to look at wave behaviour in a ripple tank.

ii) Two people standing either side of a photon emission can both people see it? Think about energy as the photon is absorbed and there is often lots of hand waving about this.

iii) A radio wave can be blocked by flywire screen mesh but an x-ray will require a fair amount of solid lead .... why the difference?

Finally I will make a statement which may seem to be selective but you need to look beyond that, I am not favouring any answer.

There is nothing special about light, radio waves exhibit the exact same behaviours they are just no readily encountered by layman. There are situations it is easier to consider the radio wave a particle but the particle is meters in diameter which is very weird for us.

Ultimately you will come up with and answer from those 4, so let me know.

In my physics take any of those answers you like, strangely it doesn't matter

There is a hint in that to concentrate on your argument rather than what poor old Orac thinks, I have no position on this nor do I care about the answer.

hmmm

(v) light is a infinitely expanding sphere.

(a) there are different intensities / frequencies of light
and the thickness of the sphere reflects the intensity
or frequency of the light.

(b) a sphere of light expands in all directions relative to the
point of its origin.

(c) the speed of the expansion of light has no limits nor does
the size of the expanding sphere of light.

its easy as

(1)


(2)


(3)

do re me

thats how easy light can be