any physics buffs?

busabeast said:
i vaugely recall an experiment in which a guy fires some electrons at a solid object and a hole in the object. the one fired at the solid part appears on the other side before the unobstructed one, and he concluded (somehow) that the particle traveled faster than light to get there... wish i could remember the guys name and where i saw it... its been awhile...
Click to expand...

First question that comes to an interested but non-expert mind: The one that seemed to pass through the solid...sure it wasn't a different one that was pushed out of the solid via some domino effect? Since electricty is a flow electrons (like water through a hose) rather than a single object (such a bullet from a gun), it seems possible that the electron fired simply displaced an electron in the target.
 
Jet Li said:
Just doing a little recreational reading and came across this really interesting piece on light. Funny,never even touched this stuff back in college. Have read many articles and books about quantum mechanics, particle physics, string, and brane theories, etc... but never seen this perspective......

Things can travel faster than light; and light doesn’t always travel very fast.

The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant: 300,000km a second. However, light does not always travel through a vacuum. In water, for example, photons travel at around three-quarters that speed.

In nuclear reactors, some particles are forced up to very high speeds, often within a fraction of the speed of light. If they are passing through an insulating medium that slows light down, they can actually travel faster than the light around them.

When this happens, they cause a blue glow, known as “Cherenkov radiation ”, which is (sort of) comparable to a sonic boom but with light. This is why nuclear reactors glow in the dark.

Incidentally, the slowest light has ever been recorded travelling was 17 meters per second – about 38 miles an hour – through rubidium cooled to almost absolute zero, when it forms a strange state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

Light has also been brought to a complete stop in the same fashion, but since that wasn't moving at all, we didn't feel we could describe that as "the slowest it has been recorded travelling".
Click to expand...




One more to add to your list...

The fastest light can travel is not 3*10^8 m/s ...

Traditionally, indexes of refraction in optics have always been considered to be greater than or equal to 1.. where the index of refraction is merely a ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum vs the speed of light in the medium its passing through..

Thus, the index of light in a vacuum is 1, or passing through water or glass etc. is greater than one...


Recently however, an index was observed LESS than 1... This means the speed of light passing through this medium MUST be faster than 3*10^8 m/s

If memory serves, its done by passing light through a super cooled gas...
 
Jet Li said:
Incidentally, the slowest light has ever been recorded travelling was 17 meters per second – about 38 miles an hour – through rubidium cooled to almost absolute zero, when it forms a strange state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
Click to expand...

Sooooooo you are saying that my bike has the possibility to be faster than the speed of light??? I'll have to remember this the next time someone asks me how fast it is.. LOL.
 
04Duramax said:
Sooooooo you are saying that my bike has the possibility to be faster than the speed of light??? I'll have to remember this the next time someone asks me how fast it is.. LOL.
Click to expand...

You still have to stop!!! :rofl:
 
Goatkart said:
One more to add to your list...

The fastest light can travel is not 3*10^8 m/s ...

Traditionally, indexes of refraction in optics have always been considered to be greater than or equal to 1.. where the index of refraction is merely a ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum vs the speed of light in the medium its passing through..

Thus, the index of light in a vacuum is 1, or passing through water or glass etc. is greater than one...


Recently however, an index was observed LESS than 1... This means the speed of light passing through this medium MUST be faster than 3*10^8 m/s

If memory serves, its done by passing light through a super cooled gas...
Click to expand...

Yep!

Makes me think of other things that are not absolute, but have at least haven't been described as absolute like the speed of light. We have had a working theory on which to base calculations on, but now with new technologies and very elegantly constructed experiments, we have challenged the status quo.

So I wonder now when we might be shown that there is a limit to how bright, bright can be, given that we have until now been under the impression that darkness is finite since it is simply the absence of light. But light has no limit of how bright it may be. And cold is the absence of heat, absolute zero being agreed upon as -273 ish celcius. But we might soon discover that there is in fact a limit to how hot something may be.........

Isn't this stuff GREAT?? ???
 
:rofl:

confused.jpg
 
MelodicMetalGod said:
First question that comes to an interested but non-expert mind: The one that seemed to pass through the solid...sure it wasn't a different one that was pushed out of the solid via some domino effect? Since electricty is a flow electrons (like water through a hose) rather than a single object (such a bullet from a gun), it seems possible that the electron fired simply displaced an electron in the target.
Click to expand...

Would have to have an electron stream with enough velocity to break the strong nuclear force and you wouldn't end up with a pure elemetal object out the other side, more like a crashed car with parts flying all over the place. Explosion form energy liberated......????

Was that the double slit experiment showing that the wave and particle nature of light can not be seperated?
 
busabeast said:
i vaugely recall an experiment in which a guy fires some electrons at a solid object and a hole in the object. the one fired at the solid part appears on the other side before the unobstructed one, and he concluded (somehow) that the particle traveled faster than light to get there... wish i could remember the guys name and where i saw it... its been awhile...
Click to expand...

I bet it was Rutherford's gold foil scattering experiment showing that there is actually a lot of nothing in the make up of matter, or more easily, the nucleus of the atom contains most of its mass....
 
Jet Li said:
So I wonder now when we might be shown that there is a limit to how bright, bright can be, given that we have until now been under the impression that darkness is finite since it is simply the absence of light. But light has no limit of how bright it may be. And cold is the absence of heat, absolute zero being agreed upon as -273 ish celcius. But we might soon discover that there is in fact a limit to how hot something may be.........

Isn't this stuff GREAT?? ???
Click to expand...



Kind of a flawed discussion at its core, as your discussing "brightness" as a property of light... When in fact "brightness" is merely a measured intensity of the occurence of photons in a specific area over a unit time...

So the limitation of brightness is purely, how many photons can you throw at it..... So, i guess if you want to be technical... the maximum brightness is if all the energy in the universe was converted into light, and hit a nearly dimensionless area, in a nearly non exsistent time... a constant amount of energy and take the limit as time and area approach zero...


best guess, brightness approaches infinity without doing any real math..

Heat will likely have the exact same resultant, as then your just discussing phonon's in the place of photons...

EVEN MORE complicated is the fact that a phonon, is in many ways nothing more than a specialised EM wave... so it is all but identical to a photon!!



Obviously, its not very likely a person can turn all matter in the universe into energy to heat their coffee, but if they did, it would be one hot cup of joe, and very BRIGHT on top of it...:laugh:


yay physics!
 
Jet Li said:
Was that the double slit experiment showing that the wave and particle nature of light can not be seperated?
Click to expand...



It still pisses me off that the electron passes through both slits...

who says you cant be in two places at one time, electrons do it all the damn time!!
 
Goatkart said:
Kind of a flawed discussion at its core, as your discussing "brightness" as a property of light... When in fact "brightness" is merely a measured intensity of the occurence of photons in a specific area over a unit time...

So the limitation of brightness is purely, how many photons can you throw at it..... So, i guess if you want to be technical... the maximum brightness is if all the energy in the universe was converted into light, and hit a nearly dimensionless area, in a nearly non exsistent time... a constant amount of energy and take the limit as time and area approach zero...


best guess, brightness approaches infinity without doing any real math..

Heat will likely have the exact same resultant, as then your just discussing phonon's in the place of photons...

EVEN MORE complicated is the fact that a phonon, is in many ways nothing more than a specialised EM wave... so it is all but identical to a photon!!



Obviously, its not very likely a person can turn all matter in the universe into energy to heat their coffee, but if they did, it would be one hot cup of joe, and very BRIGHT on top of it...:laugh:


yay physics!
Click to expand...

Approaching infinity? ???

One of those concepts that the mind just doesn't warm up to naturally. :laugh:

PS: Would make a good band name, though. :)
 
Goatkart said:
Kind of a flawed discussion at its core, as your discussing "brightness" as a property of light... When in fact "brightness" is merely a measured intensity of the occurence of photons in a specific area over a unit time...

So the limitation of brightness is purely, how many photons can you throw at it..... So, i guess if you want to be technical... the maximum brightness is if all the energy in the universe was converted into light, and hit a nearly dimensionless area, in a nearly non exsistent time... a constant amount of energy and take the limit as time and area approach zero...


best guess, brightness approaches infinity without doing any real math..

Heat will likely have the exact same resultant, as then your just discussing phonon's in the place of photons...

EVEN MORE complicated is the fact that a phonon, is in many ways nothing more than a specialised EM wave... so it is all but identical to a photon!!



Obviously, its not very likely a person can turn all matter in the universe into energy to heat their coffee, but if they did, it would be one hot cup of joe, and very BRIGHT on top of it...:laugh:


yay physics!
Click to expand...

I am with ya, but since the portion of EMR humans can see exists as both waves and particles, brightness can be described in terms of wavelength. And if as you described, if you take the modern quantum physics view, brightness is number of photons. Both are valid!
 
So it is possible that a moped could go faster than the speed of light??? I may be effin up going 4 X the speed of light I could end up in a parallel universe. Beam me up Scotty :rofl:
 
StromBusa said:
So it is possible that a moped could go faster than the speed of light??? I may be effin up going 4 X the speed of light I could end up in a parallel universe. Beam me up Scotty :rofl:
Click to expand...

Whoa their speedy, mopeds struggle with 25mph, one thing at a time..

:rofl:
 
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