Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/08 07:30:
> scott wrote:
>>> I find it rather bizare that electronic properties should actually 
>>> affect optical ones, but there we are.)
>>
>> Well yeh, what's light?
> 
> It's a phenomenon that has something to do with electricity, magnetism, 
> waves and particles, but nobody really understands what exactly. ;-)
> 
> Specifically, light is an electromagnetic wave (or is it a subatomic 
> particle?) in a particular frequency range (or is that particle energy?) 
> that registers in our eyes due to the chemical transformations it 
> induces in certain protein groups.
Light is BOTH a wave AND a particle. Some times, it act more like a particle, 
other, more like a wave. So does electrons and protons.
> 
> However, it's really damn unusual for a material's electrical or 
> magnetic properties to have any bearing at all on its optical properties.
Unusual, yes. DAMN unusual, no.
> 
> * Impure water is an excellent conductor, while pure water is a very 
> good insulator. Yet both substances have almost identical optical 
> properties.
ABSOLUTELY pure water is a prety good insulator, but just the tyniest impurety 
will change it into a conductor.
> 
> * Iron is highly magnetic, while aluminium isn't. Good luck telling the 
> two metals apart by their appearence!
Prety easy just looking. Alu is much "whiter".
Telling cobalt apart from iron from platinum by apearance is much harder.
> 
> * Electricity does not, under any remotely "normal" conditions, produce 
> light or affect it in any way. (E.g., you can't bend light using 
> electricity.) The same goes for magnetism.
Since when electricity don't produce light under "normal" conditions?
> 
> Sure, theoretically they're related. But it's not something you see in 
> the real world very often. ;-)
> 
> (I still can't figure out why you can use an oscilator to make radio 
> waves, but not light rays...)
Wait till we manage to create an oscilator that can ossilate fast enough... That 
would require the construction of a nano-scaled magnetron plunged in a magnetic 
field of a few K teslas.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you think 80s movies have the 
funniest special effects.
Aaron Gage a.k.a Slartibartfast

Post a reply to this message