Re: Light???

[Cliff Parker <cparker@EMPOWERING.COM>]

Cool idea!  I should have been more skeptical of my own thoughts
when they limit what electrons must do too rigidly.  I have
introduced the strange ideas of the uncertainty principle to my
chemistry class this week.  Yesterday on my test the last problem
gave students a chance to provide some less structured feedback.  I
usually make the last question something like "What is the most
interesting thing that you have learned in the past two weeks?"  I
was having some fun with the last problem yesterday and said, "Give
me some advice.  Please write answer in the space provided."  Then
providing a box about 1cm x 1cm.  One student wrote the following
outside of the box.  I must advise you that some of the electrons of
my ink might be in the box.

Leigh Palmer wrote:

> Here are some words that "explain" this phenomenon for me:

I like the way you put the previous line.  It expresses the
uncertainty of our words very well.

> Considering light as being absorbed and reemitted by electrons
> in a transparent medium entails the processes being virtual;
> the absorption doesn't have to be resonant absorption, and the
> time during which the electron is excited to a forbidden state
> is within the bounds of what is allowed by the uncertainty
> principle. That is, the amount by which the light is nonresonant
> times the duration of the absorption-reemission process is less
> than or of the order of Planck's constant.
>
> Leigh