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I think energy is quantified as a scalar. As both below agree, light is
also characterized vectorily, etc. therefore, ....
bc, wonders if "anything" is pure energy. Seems analytic: a thing is
energy?
John Denker wrote:
J. Schnick asks: "Is light pure energy?"_______________________________________________
On 07/03/2007 07:15 PM, Dan Crowe wrote:
Not in my book. Energy is one property of light. Light also has
momentum, frequency and polarization/helicity.
Agreed.
I might have added that light has observable electromagnetic fields
that other forms of energy might not have. Also note that the
polarization/helicity is also connected to angular momentum,
which is often well worth paying attention to.
The phrase "converted totally to energy" bothers me.
Me too.
I think I would
have said something to the effect that the matter is converted into
light that has the same amount of energy m_o c^2 that the matter had
prior to the conversion. Is light pure energy?
I would have said _rest energy_ in the amount of m c^2.
The electron and positron had mass, and therefore had rest energy,
whereas the photon is massless (and restless).
http://www.av8n.com/physics/mass.htm
I think we can agree that the electron and positron were _matter_,
whereas the photons are non-matter. I don't know a simple word that
means non-matter; lots of people (not just Feynman) say "energy"
when they mean "non-matter" ... but it is definitely an abuse of
the terminology.
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