Mysterious property of light.

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by ash64449, Nov 13, 2012.

  1. ash64449 Registered Senior Member

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    795
    Hello friends,
    Light is considered as an electromagnetic disturbance.i.e Changing electric and magnetic fields perpendicular to each other. When we pass this electromagnetic disturbance to a area where electric and magnetic field are present.Light doesn't seem to be deflected or electric and magnetic fields cannot alter or interact with light.Why is it so?

    Quantum Theory says that light is made up of Photons which are electrically neutral. Well if it is so,then it solves the problem.But Despite light is changing electric and magnetic field,Quantum theory states that it does not have charge.Why?

    Another one. Light can also be considered as a wave.Waves create an interference pattern.I too have observed it on a video. But this one contradicts my experiment.

    Take two torch light. keep the torch perpendicular to each other and there should be spacing between them. Switch on the both torches. You will observe that no interference pattern is created on both screen. When torch are kept perpendicular,when switched on will surely both light rays meet.So interference pattern should be created.But no interference as i can observe it on screen. Why is it so?
     
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  3. Tach Banned Banned

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    You are making a claim that is easily contradicted, check Stark effect and Zeeman effect. See here.
     
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  5. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    These effects pertain to the emission of photons (by atoms) in which the fields interplay with the electron orbitals. This does not pertain to photons 'in transit'.
     
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  7. Tach Banned Banned

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    You sound more like RealityCheck. Try this.
     
  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Tach is quite correct, Walter. I spend a number of years working with microwave radio relay stations in the communications industry. Very powerful magnets were incorporated into a short section of waveguide to physically rotate the microwave beam. Polarizing it.

    Even though they were called "isolators", the name is somewhat misleading but the devices were *extremely* useful. Since there is a limited number of frequencies in a given frequency band, they provided a needed degree of isolation/separation allowing for additional communications channels to be inserted in the same band. In fact, we were able to double the number of channels over the same path over a given route. It saved MILLIONS of dollars over the only other alternative - additional construction.
     
  9. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Tach -- give it up. Wagner's criticism of your objection was succinct and exactly correct. Your response was nothing but pathetic. Your source supports Wagner when then very first line is:
    (emphasis added)

    Electric and magnetic fields affect the movement of electrically charged particles, like the electrons that make up the most mobile part of electrically neutral normal matter, and so electric and magnetic fields can alter the relationship of how normal matter interacts with light. The Stark effect and Zeeman effect are about how external fields distort the spherical symmetry of atoms and so complicate their emission spectrum.

    Likewise, microwaves in a waveguide are closely coupled with matter and so Read-Only's experience doesn't relate to the interaction of magnetic fields and light in vacuum.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolator_(microwave)
    The magnetic field acts on the ferrite inserted into the waveguide.
    http://rmp.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v25/i1/p253_1
     
  10. wlminex Banned Banned

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    1,587
    OP's: "Take two torch light. keep the torch perpendicular to each other and there should be spacing between them. Switch on the both torches. You will observe that no interference pattern is created on both screen. When torch are kept perpendicular,when switched on will surely both light rays meet.So interference pattern should be created.But no interference as i can observe it on screen. Why is it so? "

    Both of your torches are emitting a wide range of frequencies of light, perhaps each with different 'bundles' (ranges) of frequencies. There likely is some degree of interference, but not enough to be dicernible to the eye. Such is 'lost' in the mixed package of multiple frequencies. If both torch ssurces were of the same frequencies (e.g., identical lasers), one would expect to observe interference patterns.
     
  11. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Tisk, tisk, RP. Until you introduced it just now there was NO hint that the discussion was limited to transmission in a VACUUM. All you've accomplished is muddying the water for the naive OP who is trying to learn something.
     
  12. wlminex Banned Banned

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    Vacuum . . . smackuum . . . . doesn't matter . . . effects are the same, just a matter of degree . . .
     
  13. Tach Banned Banned

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    You are getting personal again. You can be quite a jerk at times. As R-O correctly points out, there is no requirement of vacuum propagation in the OP discussion.
    Since you are being acting so superior, here is an explanation that might make you reflect a little before you attack again: light is definitely deflected by gravitational fields, any gravitomagnetic theory, by analogy , would predict the same effect to be produced , in vacuum, by an e-m field. And here comes the final kicker: charged black holes deflect light to a different extent than non-charged black holes. The calculation is quite trivial.
     
  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Who asked YOU - the fake PhD - to jump into this????? Go away, leave the scientific people alone and deal with your pseudo junk.
     
  15. Farsight

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    See http://physics.aps.org/articles/v5/44 where you can read this:

    "Apart from the broadening effects of diffraction, light beams tend to propagate along a straight path. Mirrors, lenses, and light guides are all ways to force light to take a more circuitous path, but an alternative that many researchers are exploring is to prepare light beams that can bend themselves along a curved path, even in vacuum. In a paper in Physical Review Letters, Ido Kaminer and colleagues at Technion, Israel, report on wave solutions to Maxwell’s equations that are both nondiffracting and capable of following a much tighter circular trajectory than was previously thought possible [1]. Apart from fundamental scientific interest, such wave solutions may lead to the possibility of synthesizing shape-preserving optical beams that make curved left- or right-handed turns on their own".
     
  16. wlminex Banned Banned

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    You have been 'Reported' . . . please see "About the Members" . . . 'Howdy! . . . This is me!' thread.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2012
  17. river

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    Apparently, from the latest news that a photon is both a wave and a particle!!!

    Is this true?
     
  18. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Suits me just fine - the moderators are well aware of your "claim" and your lack of integrity. And I've already read your fake CV and the only thing it impressed me with was, once again, your lack of integrity. So feel free to report me again. <shrug>
     
  19. Crunchy Cat F-in' *meow* baby!!! Valued Senior Member

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    That's not "latest news". It's very old news. *Every* particle can behave as a wave or a particle.
     
  20. river

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    The thing is the photon behaves as both a particle and a wave not or one or the other
     
  21. river

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    For a little more info. On this go to

    mod note: no, please don't
     
  22. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Am I the only one who finds this funny?
    And this?

     
  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Waves don't interact with each other.

    Charge, as you are probably thinking of it, is static. Waves are not.
    I think there is a clear simple answer to what you're asking, which is, that light is not special in this regard. It's the general property of electromagnetic waves. And it's not a mystery. Waves do not interact with each other. Thus, normal light, which is a band of many different wavelengths, doesn't interact with itself, which, if you think about it, would create intermodulation products that would extend infinitely in both directions, so that there could never be any form of narrow band emissions whatsoever.

    The other thing you may want to think about is the difference between adding frequencies (as in frequency modulation) vs the process of adding phases, which is what we mean by zero interaction--and from there you can contemplate the difference between coherent and non-coherent emissions.

    You can't see random phase interference. It averages out. Also, you can't see Angstroms, so you can't the interference between waves in the optical band. You can experiment with this in the audio band, and look at plots of the waves you produce, and you'll clearly see the effect of adding sine waves that are out of phase. You can repeat this by adding waves of various frequencies (playing chords for example) and compare this to observing the combined arrival of different colors at your retinas.

    If waves interacted with each other, it would be impossible to separate the communications spectrum into channels. Everything would interfere with everything else. There would be one big fat wide-open spectrum with no likely source of discriminating signals from noise. More importantly, nature would behave entirely differently than what's observed. I don't think matter could exist, at least not as we know it, since it would be impossible to have any quantization of energy, since discrete wavelengths would be made impossible.
     

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