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Re: Voting on LIGHT



At 11:51 AM 11/14/01 -0500, Joseph Bellina wrote:
What I find most interesting about this discussion is the mix of reality
claims and model claims. Are you voting on what is real (how would you
know) or what is the best model to use?

Before long this is going to turn into a discussion of what "is" is.

But why discuss light in particular? Is there really a question? I
thought that in all of physics, light (or more generally electromagnetism)
was about as well-understood as anything could get. IIRC, calculations
agree with experiment to something like 18 significant digits. What more
could you possibly want?

The opening pages of Jackson _Classical Electrodynamics_ gives a nice
discussion of when the classical approximation applies. Executive summary:
most everyday situations are classical by a wide margin. And the
full-blown quantum behavior is connected to the classical behavior by a
nice correspondence principle. Again: what more could you possibly want?

You can buy the T-shirt:
And God said
[maxwell equations]
and there was light.

If that's not good enough, please re-state the question.