A Question About Different Waves, Gamma, microwave, radio etc.

a reply to: GallopingFish

4.bp.blogspot.com...

Maybe that image will help. It might be useful, but to exaggerate it to I think get at your OP question, if we imagine the top wave crest and trough had much greater distance of height vertically then the bottom; Would it be covering more distance/space from a horizontal A to B?

a reply to: ImaFungi
I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. In those waveforms the lines have different lengths if they have the same amplitude (height from top to bottom), and when amplitude is the same OP is right that the shorter wavelength lines have more length, and you are right that it would be possible to increase the amplitude of the longer wavelength lines to match. So that illustration can show both concepts, but the point you're missing is both concepts are flawed with regard to light or electromagnetic radiation in general.

What's varying with EM radiation is field strength of the electric and magnetic fields, which I'm sure you know after reading the EM wiki over 50 times. There is no line like in the drawing you posted.

We can draw sinusoidal lines to represent the amplitudes of those fields, but the fields are not the lines we draw, so there's really not any additional distance to follow. The drawings may give that illusion, but they are misleading in that respect.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Does light travel from point A to B in a sinusoidal wave pattern and/or like that 4 sided wave pattern with electric and magnetic field changing?


I believe OP is about; If light created at point A will always reach point B at the same exact moment, regardless of the energy of the light created at point A, wavelength or frequency, then is it true that the wave or particle created at point A of a higher energy, is traveling through more space technically to get to point B.

Its like imagine 2 roads from new york to California. One road is very rapidly squiggly back and forth, winding road, the whole way there, and the other road has a longer wind length. Using the same car, traveling consistently at the same speed, would one not be correct in assuming the less winded roaded car would arrive at point B in less time?

Now if on the winded road was a ferrari that went constant 100mph and the less windy road was a mini van that went consistantly 30mph, or something appropriate, then both would arrive at point B at the same time.

If you dont like this car model, could we use the same idea, but instead of driving on the roads, how about the building of the roads. More time and energy to construct the winding road, that travels through more total space, (quickest path between two points)etc.

Now the point about amplitude, is the less windy road could overcome the distance of the windy road, with sufficiently high amplitude. This is also a concept I felt being suggested by OP, in wondering, how 'things' with different amplitudes and wavelengths and frequency always cover a distance A to B in the same amount of time.

a reply to: ImaFungi

Yes that post you just did is pretty much what I was trying to convey. Same distance covered, same time arrived, higher frequency touches more space as it travelled the same distance in the same time.

a reply to: ImaFungi
There was nothing wrong with the example GallopingFish already gave of the runner running around cones in a squiggly path. You're just restating different versions of that.

But none of those apply to electromagnetic propagation, as there is nothing following a squiggly line in EM propagation.

a reply to: GallopingFish
Yes I already understood your runner example, but do you understand now why that doesn't apply to EM radiation? There are no squiggly paths in EM radiation. There are varying field strengths.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: ImaFungi
There was nothing wrong with the example GallopingFish already gave of the runner running around cones in a squiggly path. You're just restating different versions of that.

But none of those apply to electromagnetic propagation, as there is nothing following a squiggly line in EM propagation.

a reply to: GallopingFish
Yes I already understood your runner example, but do you understand now why that doesn't apply to EM radiation? There are no squiggly paths in EM radiation. There are varying field strengths.

Ok i am beginning to understand now, but my mind works in more of a visual manner.

EM radiation described as waves is a misleading description for a visualizer, What you are saying is that the construct if i can call it that is not a wave. If i looked at the EM radiation coming strait at me and could see it it would look like a circle.

The Amplitude decreases or increases the size of the circle (field Strength).

From within the construct there are the waves (phase velocity), and the higher frequency waves produce a stronger construct itself.

This construct travels the speed of light.

Is this more like what it is?

a reply to: GallopingFish

So If Gamma was 1030Hz and Radio 1030Hz...

Doesn't work like that. Gamma and radio refer to different specific frequency ranges of the EM spectrum.

Read through these lessons www.physicsclassroom.com... I think they will help tremendously.

originally posted by: GallopingFish
Ok i am beginning to understand now, but my mind works in more of a visual manner.

EM radiation described as waves is a misleading description for a visualizer, What you are saying is that the construct if i can call it that is not a wave. If i looked at the EM radiation coming strait at me and could see it it would look like a circle.

No the circle I referred to was if you drop a pebble in a pond and look down, you see circular ripples in the water going out from where the pebble hit, and you can call those waves. So let's start with those water waves since they are easy to visualize.

Now let's say that there's a leaf floating on the water about 1 meter away from where you drop the pebble. When the waves from the pebble reach the leaf, do they carry the leaf away? No, the leaf pretty much stays in place, though it wiggles slightly up and down with the waves and maybe a tiny bit back and forth.

So in this example, the fact that the leaf stays where it is on top of the waves shows that the speed of the waves and the up and down motion are different things.

Light is much harder to visualize because the waves are made of invisible electric and magnetic fields, but we can try. Take a 1 HZ sinusoidally varying magnetic wave and put a compass in the magnetic field. Every half second, the needle will point in the opposite direction, so the needle should spin around in circles once a second. There is an invisible magnetic field changing direction, even if the compass stays where it is. So there's no distance up and down like we had with the water wave, you just get a spinning compass. This is why you can't count the distance of what's spinning the compass needle, there is no distance to count. It's a magnetic field.

The frequencies of light and gamma rays are are far too high to make a compass spin, but the concept is similar. There's no squiggly line, no up and down distance like with the water waves, just an invisible magnetic field field that's changing direction (and the corresponding electric field).

originally posted by: DenyObfuscation
Doesn't work like that. Gamma and radio refer to different specific frequency ranges of the EM spectrum.

Read through these lessons www.physicsclassroom.com... I think they will help tremendously.

Yes, or refer to one of the EM spectrum summary charts. I like this one, because it shows both frequency and wavelength. The red squiggly line is obviously not to scale though because it covers 16 orders of magnitude and only shows one, because showing 16 would be impractical or impossible.

shantyscvog.blogspot.com...

Do we have any Bose Einstein condensates of Positronium yet?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I think you know all about exactly what you said, but I think you have no idea how the EM field exists in space, or how when an electron is accelerated at point A, the movement of the electron creates a detection at point B in the same amount of time regardless of amplitude,frequency or wavelength, regardless of the energy that went into the acceleration of the electron, you simply just have no idea.

a reply to: ImaFungi
I don't know if the Copenhagen interpretation is true or not, nobody does.
But I can describe what to expect using a mathematical model which matches observation, and to know how to do that is to know something, even if it's not knowing "everything", and I wouldn't describe that as having "no idea" as you put it.

Now if you said I have no idea why the speed of light has the value it does instead of some different value, you'd be right about that.