sensiman
Nov29-04, 06:35 PM
Does anybody mind helping me with reality?
I have 3 questions.
I was a telecomms engineer (with a small e, not an Engineer) until I retired in ’92.
In those wild days, if, for example, I was cutting a quarter wave wire antenna, I would calculate the wavelength of the desired frequency with c, the speed of light, approximated to 3x10^8 m/s.
But I sometimes found that an odd number to work with, and I started using imperial units of ft/s, and this gives an approximate figure of c=1x10^9 ft/s, which is much easier to work with.
I also realised that the metric approximation is closer to the actual speed of light than the imperial approximation, but in my work that didn’t matter too much as it was easy to tune the antenna.
But this got me thinking, why not change the length of the foot to make it match precisely for c=1x10^9 ft/s. I did the calculation once long ago and do not have them to hand, but from memory I think that the foot needs to be increased a little.
But then I thought, why not change the second? Both the foot and the second are man-made units, so with a little tinkering we could end up with units that are easier to work with, and then we could say for example, that a foot is how far light would travel in one nanosecond.
But the main reason for bringing all this up, are there any basic fundamental units in nature that we should use for our time and length?
I am aware of Plank time and Plank length, but these are incredibly small and need powers of 30 to 40 to be useful, but Mega and Giga are in common usage nowadays, as are micro and nano, so are there any natural sources we could use that are around the same scales?
I have seen pictures of the IBM logo made from individual atoms using a STM or somesuch device to position the atoms, but the spherical surface I saw in those pictures, was that the electron “shell” or the nucleus of the atom? What was I actually looking at?
“Twas brillig, and the slivy toves,
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
Those two lines from “Jabberwocky” perfectly describe for me how electrons interact in an atom.
But what does an electron actually do in an atom?
I have the old picture of electrons orbiting in their shells, or a more recent picture of the electrons occupying energy levels, or probability densities, and one picture of electrons bouncing repeatedly of the nucleus (which rather neatly accounts for inertia), but all these pictures are models, does anyone yet know what is actually happening?
Sensi
I have 3 questions.
I was a telecomms engineer (with a small e, not an Engineer) until I retired in ’92.
In those wild days, if, for example, I was cutting a quarter wave wire antenna, I would calculate the wavelength of the desired frequency with c, the speed of light, approximated to 3x10^8 m/s.
But I sometimes found that an odd number to work with, and I started using imperial units of ft/s, and this gives an approximate figure of c=1x10^9 ft/s, which is much easier to work with.
I also realised that the metric approximation is closer to the actual speed of light than the imperial approximation, but in my work that didn’t matter too much as it was easy to tune the antenna.
But this got me thinking, why not change the length of the foot to make it match precisely for c=1x10^9 ft/s. I did the calculation once long ago and do not have them to hand, but from memory I think that the foot needs to be increased a little.
But then I thought, why not change the second? Both the foot and the second are man-made units, so with a little tinkering we could end up with units that are easier to work with, and then we could say for example, that a foot is how far light would travel in one nanosecond.
But the main reason for bringing all this up, are there any basic fundamental units in nature that we should use for our time and length?
I am aware of Plank time and Plank length, but these are incredibly small and need powers of 30 to 40 to be useful, but Mega and Giga are in common usage nowadays, as are micro and nano, so are there any natural sources we could use that are around the same scales?
I have seen pictures of the IBM logo made from individual atoms using a STM or somesuch device to position the atoms, but the spherical surface I saw in those pictures, was that the electron “shell” or the nucleus of the atom? What was I actually looking at?
“Twas brillig, and the slivy toves,
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
Those two lines from “Jabberwocky” perfectly describe for me how electrons interact in an atom.
But what does an electron actually do in an atom?
I have the old picture of electrons orbiting in their shells, or a more recent picture of the electrons occupying energy levels, or probability densities, and one picture of electrons bouncing repeatedly of the nucleus (which rather neatly accounts for inertia), but all these pictures are models, does anyone yet know what is actually happening?
Sensi