Blender Particle Photon Simulation (interesting results w soft bodies)

[ThiagoMNobrega]

TL;DR Summary

The interesting part is that the photon simulation resembles a ripple/wave form at at the end. My experiment was an attempt to simulate what happens to a particle photon that is going at the speed of light using Blender.

tl;dr: A sphere was giving a soft body, the rigidness and dampness of it of it was set to zero. contains the link for video (0:42) results in the post.

(0:00 / 0:42) photon going light-speed blender simulation

I have no idea how a mathematician would translate this example into an equation. Every time I've worked with soft bodies I seem to run short of mathematicians buddies. Regardless of the mathematics of continuous object deformation, this was a very simple and low polygon simulation. I suspect that, with more polygons on the sphere, the more the wave-like-form (that takes place at the end) would be clear.

What's going on this video?

1 - I created a sphere in this software called Blender
2 - I created a plane, added rigid bodies and colliders to both the plane and the sphere
3 - I added a soft-body to the sphere and tempered with the rigidness and the dampness, setting both to zero
4 - Result: it deforms the same way I'd expect a "classical/particle photon", with a soft-body, would shape to be, that is, at light speed

Observation: the impact is not what I expect the particle to behave. What I expect is that once the "particle/photon" reaches light speed that it would look like the ripple/wave form.Yes, I know this is most likely absurdly wrong and this post should be taken lightly if there is an abundance of ignorance regarding the topics at hand. I just wanted to explore a bit how I'd make a classical particle model with soft bodies and the results were interesting enough that I wanted to share.

I'm interested in seen if anyone had any interesting ideas regarding this video or any ideas into testing this in the future! What do you guys think? Also, please don't be shy on telling me I'm wrong on something, I love to learn.

- Thiago M Nóbrega

 

[Dale]

While this is a nice animation it has nothing whatsoever to do with photons (besides the screen producing photons during the display of the animation). Photons are not little spheres that make ripples when they splat.

 

[ThiagoMNobrega]

While this is a nice animation it has nothing whatsoever to do with photons (besides the screen producing photons during the display of the animation). Photons are not little spheres that make ripples when they splat.

Thank you so much for the reply! Yeah, I guess I didn't make a couple of things clear. The ripple would be the "photon" at light speed. I guess once it collides it goes back to looking like a sphere. I'll probably get to work on an updated version of this sphere simulation to encapsulate better what I had in mind

I wonder tho, is there a concession on the shape of a photon? I'd image that since photon detectors are based of silicon or germanium, absorbing to detect, that we don't have the technology (or might be impossible) to observe the shape of a photon. Than again, I could be way off!

Also, thank you so much for your inputs/feedback! I guess I'm trying to make a "particle", or a "photon", or 3d sphere with classical physics into it, to behave like a wave.

 

[PeroK]

Observation: the impact is not what I expect the particle to behave. What I expect is that once the "particle/photon" reaches light speed that it would look like the ripple/wave form.

There is nothing special about the speed of light in the Newtonian mechanics that is the basis of your simulation. It certainly doesn't mean that a particle turns into a wave at the speed of light!

 

[Dale]

The ripple would be the "photon" at light speed.

No. It isn't. A photon is not a wiggly ball and it doesn't follow the physics/equations implemented in Blender. You simply cannot use Blender to say anything meaningful about photons.

 

[PeroK]

Also, thank you so much for your inputs/feedback! I guess I'm trying to make a "particle", or a "photon", or 3d sphere with classical physics into it, to behave like a wave.

Here is a good introduction to how wave-like and particle-like behaviour can be reconciled by quantum mechanics:

http://physics.mq.edu.au/~jcresser/Phys304/Handouts/QuantumPhysicsNotes.pdf

 

[ThiagoMNobrega]

Thank you Perok and Dale, you guys are legends!