Re: [Phys-l] stranger than fiction

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

Hej, curtis!

We may have a little in common:

My first non-academic job was, inter alia,  making a fast FTIR / TIR  
switch for a Cr LASER Ranger (ca '58? '62?) using a piezoelectric  
driver.

My dissertation involved metallic films on the rear of prisms, and  
when I discovered the Berkeley Physics Lab. series I immediately made  
a pair of huge wax prisms.  A few years ago I hosted a workshop  
(NCNAAPT) on microwave optics and gave away a pair of wax prisms  
along with a coupala klyston transmitters, etc.

When I commented to Bob Eisberg the similarity of Alpha transmission  
and my microwave evanescence and transmission demonstrations his  
comment was "A wave is a wave is a wave."

bc


On 2009, Feb 09, , at 14:43, curtis osterhoudt wrote:

> I must say that Green was a singularly bright man. In my graduate  
> work, I studied evanescent fields, and though Newton had done some  
> amazing experimental studies of evanescent optical fields (and  
> described such things as the Goos-Hänchen shift), Green was the  
> first to really appreciate the results and derive much of the stuff  
> mathematically.
>    His writings are clear and brilliant, and so far as I know, he's  
> the first to really take complex roots seriously, and consider that  
> they have real impact on physical phenomena (his solutions of the  
> Helmholtz equation lead directly to evanescent fields, when one  
> treats complex wavenumbers on the same level as real wavenumbers).
>
>    For this list, both that last point (complex roots really *do*  
> matter!) and his humble and remarkable life would serve as a good  
> starting point for conversations at the high school level.
>
>  /************************************
> Down with categorical imperative!
> flutzpah@yahoo.com
> ************************************/
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
> To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
> Sent: Monday, February 9, 2009 1:06:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [Phys-l] stranger than fiction
>
> In the context of Green functions:
>
> On 02/08/2009 07:40 PM, Stefan Jeglinski wrote:
>
> > So if it's conventionally defined in terms of delta functions, did GG
> > then use them?
>
> No.
>
> > Or, did GG use a more convoluted approach?
>
> That is a singularly bad pun.
cut