Recent content by Infrasound

Question, For a given wavelength of light, I have assumed that there will typically exist one photon (on average) per complete wave/peak(This would mean that a train of 5 waves would contain 5 photons). I have also assumed that the photon would most likely be "found" at the peak of the...

I have always been told that scientists such as Mendeleev used atomic mass to list the known elements of their time. I have always been curious as to how those early scientists actually determined the atomic masses of those known elements. What kind of experiment or process/principle was used...

I think most of us have probably seen the little trick in which somone will place a burning candle in a bottle and get something like an egg to be pushed inside the bottle. How does this happen? I understand that a vacuum is created inside the bottle, and the normal outside air...

Is this particular behavior of iron due to it being involved in the glass lattice? I imagine that iron alone does not have a wide band absorbtion spectrum with just green being reflected/transmitted.

When looking at my computer table, I notice that when i look at the glass from above it appears to be clear/transparent to all visible colors, but when I look at the edge of the table, the glass appears to be some kind of green color. Why does this happen, and why only this color?

While reading Feynman's 6 Easy Pieces, I see he talks about bouncing photons off of the electrons that are passing through two slits. According to Feynman, when a photon strikes an electron near one of the slits, it bounces (sometimes back at the observer) and registered as a sharp point of...

Which of the following is consistent with experiment/observation. When light is reflected off of a material, what happens to the photon? A. Is it absorbed by the electron or lattice and then re-emitted? OR B. Does it somehow just reflect/bounce off the electron/lattice? Kind of...

How could sodium chloride produce chlorine (neutral atoms rather than ions) in a swimming pool? I have always understood that chlorine takes an electron from sodium, because it's nucleus can pull more strongly on it. So, if the two were broken apart, wouldn't the chlorine keep the electron...

As far as explaining the refraction of light through glass (as an example), does the Huygens-Fresnel principle serve any purpose in the quantum mechanical (or the quantum electrodynamical) model? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Refraction_-_Huygens-Fresnel_principle.svg Is the Huygens...

According to this view, the "field" where the electrical force can be exerted on other particles is also made up of self-contained photons...And those photons don't move...Correct?

See video below for animation of my original picture. I am now thinking that this model is wrong in the sense that photons do not travel out in all directions simultaneously from the electron, but rather, they fly out in one direction, one at a time.

Wait, I was visualizing the strings as being the electric field around a charged particle, through which vibrations travel. That is the aether theory? I can't believe how outdated/wrong I am every time I try to imagine things. Ha. So is the electric field something else?

Ah, I'm very sorry about that. Thanks to you as well! Anyhow, are you saying that it's in some way like vibrations traveling through the field at the speed of light? I have in the past always visualized something like an infinite number of guitar strings in every possible direction away...

Hello again, After asking for a better way to visualize electrons around a nucleus (and receiving one - thank you alxm), I am now left wondering about photons. How should I go about visualizing them? I have heard that they have a wavefunction, just like electrons do, but I would like to...

-So because we can't really know where the electron currently is, or where it was in the past, we can't really talk about its "speed". -But we know that electrons have momentum or energy because of what they can do when they jump around or move through a circuit. Is that more or less...