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Re: teeny atoms absorb huge EM waves



I sometimes think that our common physics teacher parlance gets in the way
of our understanding: In this thread we have "energy " being "sucked in" as
if it were a fluid and not a property of a body. This is like saying the
object "sucked in " "blue" and became "bluer"

We are talking about E/M radiation as if it were a "wave" -- elsewhere we
might speak as if it were a particle -- we might mumble something about
wave/particle duality. We can perform calculations as if E/M radiation
were a wave or sometimes a particle, but we seem to forget that it is
likely not either one. It is not that sometimes light acts like a particle
and sometimes like a wave, BUT that it always acts like light -- and we
just don't know much more than that.

I remember reading somewhere a pertinent analogy: A Martian (or alien of
your choice) decides to visit the Earth. To prepare s/he (actually Martians
don't have gender.) picks French and German - thinking s/he will visit
Europe. But alas, due to an inter-spacial hyper-storm, s/he lands in
Toledo, Ohio -- where some of the words spoken sound vaguely like French
and some of the words sound vaguely like German. But what the Martian is
hearing is English -- or at least an approximation of English -- after all
this is Toledo.

It isn't that English sometimes is like German and sometimes like French,
it is English -- what ever that is these days.

Just me over here in my little corner

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen