POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : A puzzle : Re: A puzzle Server Time
5 Sep 2024 11:25:57 EDT (-0400)
  Re: A puzzle  
From: Darren New
Date: 1 Aug 2009 14:23:32
Message: <4a748824$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Question: Since the doorway to be bedroom is less than 170 cm wide, does 
> that mean those waves can't leave the room? 

Sound waves are longitudinal.
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/Class/sound/u11l1b.html
Hence, they'll fit thru any hole big enough to not diffract the wave as it 
goes through the hole.

Light is (essentially) a traverse wave[1], which is why your microwave oven 
has little holes in the screen so you can see in without getting fried. It's 
working like you think - the light has a frequency high enough that it fits 
thru the holes, while the microwaves are bigger and bounce off.

On the other hand, radio waves are *so* big they go thru lots of inter-atom 
holes at once (like a wave going past a row of pylons holding up a pier) and 
hence will go thru walls where visible light won't.

[1] Of course, it's not a wave, but the math makes it have many of the same 
properties as a wave, and this is one of them. That's why polarizers work 
such as in sun-glasses. You can't polarize a longitudinal wave.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."


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