About too much light in a room

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter Born2Perform
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Light
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the behavior of photons in a room with highly reflective surfaces and the implications of their accumulation over time. Participants explore concepts related to light, reflection, and quantum mechanics, particularly focusing on the nature of bosons and the principles governing their occupancy in space.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests using a super reflecting membrane and specialized glass to trap photons in a room, questioning what happens as they accumulate.
  • Another participant explains that photons, being bosons, can occupy the same state without restriction, challenging the idea that there is a limit to their accumulation.
  • A participant raises a concern about the implications of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle on the occupancy of space by multiple photons.
  • Another participant clarifies that the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which applies to fermions, does not limit bosons in the same way.
  • There is a correction regarding the interpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, indicating a misunderstanding of its implications.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the implications of quantum principles for photons, particularly regarding the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the nature of bosons versus fermions. The discussion remains unresolved with multiple competing interpretations present.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various quantum mechanical principles, but there are unresolved assumptions about the behavior of light in highly reflective environments and the specific conditions under which these principles apply.

Born2Perform
Messages
80
Reaction score
0
Cover all the walls of the room where you are now of a super reflecting membrane.
The glass of the lamp must be the glass that police uses for the interrogatories, in order that light just can exit.

The photons that comes out from the lamp (powerful one) must acccumulate in the room, then after some time, i don't know how much, what happends?
There will be always space for other photons?
 
Science news on Phys.org
Born2Perform said:
Cover all the walls of the room where you are now of a super reflecting membrane.
The glass of the lamp must be the glass that police uses for the interrogatories, in order that light just can exit.

The photons that comes out from the lamp (powerful one) must acccumulate in the room, then after some time, i don't know how much, what happends?
There will be always space for other photons?

Photons are bosons. There's nothing to prevent them from occupying the same "state", including phase space, as many as they want.

Furthermore, there are no "mirrors" that are 100% reflecting. Try increasing the brightness of a light hitting a mirror. Eventually, it will become warm, meaning it is absorbing some of the light hitting it. The conduction electrons that are reponsible for the "reflection" process in an ordinary mirror (a mirror is nothing more than a thin metal film) generate heat as it oscillates at the metal's surface due to the light's electric field.

Zz.
 
ZapperZ said:
Photons are bosons. There's nothing to prevent them from occupying the same "state", including phase space, as many as they want.
i thought that the indetermination principe or something like it does not let 10 things to stay in the same poin of space
 
What you're thinking of is the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and it applies to same-spin fermions, not bosons. Fermions resist being forced into the same quantum state with similar particles with the same spin.
 
Born2Perform said:
i thought that the indetermination principe or something like it does not let 10 things to stay in the same poin of space

That's an incorrect interpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Zz.
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
2K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
2K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
Replies
7
Views
2K
  • · Replies 20 ·
Replies
20
Views
4K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
  • · Replies 55 ·
2
Replies
55
Views
4K
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
4K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
2K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
1K