Experiments on light?
in [Relativity]
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From: Androcles on 3 Oct 2009 14:36 "Benj" <bjacoby(a)iwaynet.net> wrote in message news:86e7dd0e-dd38-4d11-bbf0-d92accc2b798(a)p15g2000vbl.googlegroups.com... On Oct 3, 12:27 am, "Androcles" <Headmas...(a)Hogwarts.physics_o> wrote: > =============================================== > The Nazi party's last leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of > Germany > by president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. > Just one year for it to be a Nazi invention and given away to > the USA for Michelson's birthday prezzie before the old chap > croaked. The thing is, why didn't the Nazis invent the compact disc > to go along with it, flood the market with cheap records and win > the Eurovision Song Contest? Let's be thankful they didn't. (Basically because they refused to work on it because it was "Jewish physics") Had they not been so ethnically shortsighted they'd have won the war and we'd all be speaking (singing) German now. :( =========================================== What's wrong with that? Freude, schoner Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum. Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt, Alle Menschen werden Bruder, Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt. Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen KuB der ganzen Welt! Bruder - uberm Sternenzelt MuB ein lieber Vater wohnen. =========================================== Speaking of CDs I worked on a device that was a thin film disk written on by a laser back in the early 70s with some schoolmates of mine who had a patent on it. The patent was assigned to another company who retained the rights for data storage for point of sale use. My friends had all other rights. [basic idea was the disk would record all bad credit card numbers transmitted by radio overnight.They later went to just calling in by phone instead.] My pals kept trying to figure out what such a storage device would be good for if it wasn't for credit card numbers? They couldn't think of a thing! I just smiled and said nothing figuring if they couldn't figure it out, I sure as hell was not going to make them rich. Eventually others did a slightly different variation on the same idea for audio recording. Those clowns suffered from the same syndrome in that they couldn't think of using it for computer data storage either. Oh well, the smartest man in the universe [Bill Gates] couldn't figure out the internet might be useful either. ============================================== I've got a problem like that. If I patent my light accelerator now I can see an immediate use for it when someone gets around to going to Mars, but by the time that happens someone will have read my patent, realised its potential, thought of a better way and I'll end up with nothing. It's kinda like Edison's cylindrical phonograph, it worked in principle but was soon superseded by the disc with a spiral groove in place of a helical one, and now that's replaced by the memory stick with no moving parts at all. So I need an immediate use for it now and I can't think of one. Concorde was the fastest airliner ever, but the economics of jumbo jets meant it was before its time, as my light accelerator is.
From: Paul B. Andersen on 5 Oct 2009 07:46 Jonah Thomas wrote: > I woke up with a sudden thought. > > For a few dollars I can buy a diffraction grating that's much much > better than the one Newton used. > > And for a few dollars I can buy a laser that's much much better than the > one Michelson used. > > And for a few dollars more I can buy a sheet of polaroid that's far > better than the one Fresnel used. > > It ought to be pretty cheap and easy to replicate the old experiments, > given modern technology. I got excited. I looked around the house. We > had one place that would be perfect, a pretty long distance, half of it > a narrow corridor, I could open the bedroom door to get more distance if > needed, a mirror already mounted at the far end. Perfect! Particularly > at night. Maybe I could show the results to my kids, they might be > interested. > > So I went to my wife and asked her. "Honey, I was thinking I'd like to > do some laser experiments, and the hall would be just perfect for it, > would you mind if I set up some stuff there?" > > She laughed. "That's perfect! I like it! My husband wants to set up a > laser lab in our hall. I'm going to dine out on that story for months." > > "OK, so you don't mind?" > > "Are you serious?! Hell no! Lasers around my kids? I like to joke about > you being a mad scientist making death rays but no." > > "You don't mind the kids teasing the cat with lasers." > > "That's different." > > Maybe it isn't so easy after all. That's why Newton never married. :-) But to be serious: You can indeed quite easily and cheaply repeat many of the classic experiments. But only as a demonstration of the principle, to make a serious optical experiment isn't much simpler now than it was 'in the old days'. Take the MMX as an example. It's quite easy to make a Michelson interferometer, but the fringes will likely drift even if you do not rotate it. Michelson's problem was not the lack of a laser (he had narrow-band source, Na - lamp), it was to get the whole set-up stable enough. That's why he ended up with the interferometer mounted on a slab of stone floating in mercury. Michelson's original 1887 paper: http://home.c2i.net/pb_andersen/pdf/MMX.pdf -- Paul http://home.c2i.net/pb_andersen/
From: Paul B. Andersen on 5 Oct 2009 07:59 Jonah Thomas wrote: > If you have the only laser in the world and nobody knows how > to make more, how much is it worth? I have the only KLTUHN in the world, nobody knows how to make more. How much is it worth? What will you give me for it? Right. That much. -- Paul http://home.c2i.net/pb_andersen/
From: Jonah Thomas on 5 Oct 2009 09:58 "Paul B. Andersen" <paul.b.andersen(a)somewhere.no> wrote: > Jonah Thomas wrote: > > > If you have the only laser in the world and nobody knows how > > to make more, how much is it worth? > > I have the only KLTUHN in the world, nobody knows how to make more. > How much is it worth? > What will you give me for it? > Right. > That much. Show me what it does. I might be interested. You probably do have the only one. When I looked for it on Google the best hit was for a label in a badly machine-read Algol program.
From: Jonah Thomas on 5 Oct 2009 10:03
"Paul B. Andersen" <paul.b.andersen(a)somewhere.no> wrote: > You can indeed quite easily and cheaply repeat many > of the classic experiments. But only as a demonstration > of the principle, to make a serious optical experiment isn't > much simpler now than it was 'in the old days'. I expect that some things are easy and some are hard. It's the hard ones that require serious experimental physicists, and there will be a place for them no matter how easy some traditional projects get. > Take the MMX as an example. It's quite easy to make a Michelson > interferometer, but the fringes will likely drift even if you do not > rotate it. Michelson's problem was not the lack of a laser > (he had narrow-band source, Na - lamp), it was to get the whole > set-up stable enough. That's why he ended up with the interferometer > mounted on a slab of stone floating in mercury. Sure. I wouldn't try to do that one. On the other hand, I can imagine doing something like that looking for the confounding variables. Something like MMX might turn out to be a sensitive vibration detector, etc. The trick is to find a way to cheaply control for all but *one* confounding variable at a time.... |