Recent content by gradies

please don't take offence, but these are assertions not explanations. I understand how in order for light to slow down it's wavelegth must decrease. What we were discussing is how the absorption/reemission explanation of refraction accounts for the wavelength decrease. By the way I'm visualizing...

You could gather all sorts of data on coffee rings. Those little rings left on the counter from evaporated coffee. It doesn’t have much to do with thermodynamics, except that evaporation is purely a thermodynamic effect. And the explanation of how those rings are formed is pretty neat. I can...

explain

Thanks for the welcome. Well, since all electromagnetic radiation transfers heat, by cutting out any/all the radiation transmitted from a white light source that isn’t visible you would drastically decrease the radiated heat while not loosing any of the light necessary to maintain light...

The electron is a point mass, but when it's in a "cloud" it's uncertain where this mass is, and the more you know where it is the less you know when it was there. Why this is important is because it's not just that our instruments suck it’s that the information isn't even there to "know."

Any frequency of light warms a surface that it is absorbed by, not just those sitting within the IR range, so the heat your feeling could easily be from visible light which corresponds to a higher temperature than IR. Thermal radiation being confined to the IR region is a common misconception...