Classical Physics - The Electromagnetic Spectrum

We live in a sea of waves. With visual aids, students may explore the unique relationship between the unseen electric and magnetic waves surrounding us. See the difference between wavelength and frequency scales in addition to understanding radio and microwave usage, x-ray and gamma ray absorption and much more.

CHARTS AND GRAPHS

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The Electromagnetic Spectrum

https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/emspectrum1.html

The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is the range of all types of EM radiation. Radiation is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes – the visible light that comes from a lamp in your house and the radio waves that come from a radio station are two types of electromagnetic radiation. The other types of EM radiation that make up the electromagnetic spectrum are microwaves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays.

You know more about the electromagnetic spectrum than you may think. The image below shows where you might encounter each portion of the EM spectrum in your day-to-day life.

The electromagnetic spectrum from lowest energy/longest wavelength (at the top) to highest energy/shortest wavelength (at the bottom). (Credit: NASA's Imagine the Universe)

Radio: Your radio captures radio waves emitted by radio stations, bringing your favorite tunes. Radio waves are also emitted by stars and gases in space.

Microwave: Microwave radiation will cook your popcorn in just a few minutes, but is also used by astronomers to learn about the structure of nearby galaxies.

Infrared: Night vision goggles pick up the infrared light emitted by our skin and objects with heat. In space, infrared light helps us map the dust between stars.

Visible: Our eyes detect visible light. Fireflies, light bulbs, and stars all emit visible light.

Ultraviolet: Ultraviolet radiation is emitted by the Sun and are the reason skin tans and burns. "Hot" objects in space emit UV radiation as well.

X-ray: A dentist uses X-rays to image your teeth, and airport security uses them to see through your bag. Hot gases in the Universe also emit X-rays.

Gamma ray: Doctors use gamma-ray imaging to see inside your body. The biggest gamma-ray generator of all is the Universe.

Tour of the EMS 01 - Introduction

Tour of the EMS 02 - Radio Waves

Tour of the EMS 03 - Microwaves

Tour of the EMS 04 - Infrared Waves

Tour of the EMS 05 - Visible Light Waves

Tour of the EMS 06 - Ultraviolet Waves

Tour of the EMS 07 - X-Rays

Tour of the EMS 08 - Gamma Waves

Is a radio wave the same as a gamma ray?

Are radio waves completely different physical objects than gamma-rays? They are produced in different processes and are detected in different ways, but they are not fundamentally different. Radio waves, gamma-rays, visible light, and all the other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are electromagnetic radiation.

Electromagnetic radiation can be described in terms of a stream of mass-less particles, called photons, each traveling in a wave-like pattern at the speed of light. Each photon contains a certain amount of energy. The different types of radiation are defined by the the amount of energy found in the photons. Radio waves have photons with low energies, microwave photons have a little more energy than radio waves, infrared photons have still more, then visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, and, the most energetic of all, gamma-rays.

Measuring electromagnetic radiation

Electromagnetic radiation can be expressed in terms of energy, wavelength, or frequency. Frequency is measured in cycles per second, or Hertz. Wavelength is measured in meters. Energy is measured in electron volts. Each of these three quantities for describing EM radiation are related to each other in a precise mathematical way. But why have three ways of describing things, each with a different set of physical units?

Comparison of wavelength, frequency and energy for the electro-
magnetic spectrum. (Credit: NASA's Imagine the Universe)

The short answer is that scientists don't like to use numbers any bigger or smaller than they have to. It is much easier to say or write "two kilometers" than "two thousand meters." Generally, scientists use whatever units are easiest for the type of EM radiation they work with.

Astronomers who study radio waves tend to use wavelengths or frequencies. Most of the radio part of the EM spectrum falls in the range from about 1 cm to 1 km, which is 30 gigahertz (GHz) to 300 kilohertz (kHz) in frequencies. The radio is a very broad part of the EM spectrum.

Infrared and optical astronomers generally use wavelength. Infrared astronomers use microns (millionths of a meter) for wavelengths, so their part of the EM spectrum falls in the range of 1 to 100 microns. Optical astronomers use both angstroms (0.00000001 cm, or 10-8 cm) and nanometers (0.0000001 cm, or 10-7 cm). Using nanometers, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red light have wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers. (This range is just a tiny part of the entire EM spectrum, so the light our eyes can see is just a little fraction of all the EM radiation around us.)

The wavelengths of ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray regions of the EM spectrum are very small. Instead of using wavelengths, astronomers that study these portions of the EM spectrum usually refer to these photons by their energies, measured in electron volts (eV). Ultraviolet radiation falls in the range from a few electron volts to about 100 eV. X-ray photons have energies in the range 100 eV to 100,000 eV (or 100 keV). Gamma-rays then are all the photons with energies greater than 100 keV.

Why do we put telescopes in orbit?

The Earth's atmosphere stops most types of electromagnetic radiation from space from reaching Earth's surface. This illustration shows how far into the atmosphere different parts of the EM spectrum can go before being absorbed. Only portions of radio and visible light reach the surface. (Credit: STScI/JHU/NASA)

Most electromagnetic radiation from space is unable to reach the surface of the Earth. Radio frequencies, visible light and some ultraviolet light makes it to sea level. Astronomers can observe some infrared wavelengths by putting telescopes on mountain tops. Balloon experiments can reach 35 km above the surface and can operate for months. Rocket flights can take instruments all the way above the Earth's atmosphere, but only for a few minutes before they fall back to Earth.

For long-term observations, however, it is best to have your detector on an orbiting satellite and get above it all!

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Wikipedia

Introduction

The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies (the spectrum) of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies.

The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging from below one hertz to above 1025 hertz, corresponding to wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atomic nucleus. This frequency range is divided into separate bands, and the electromagnetic waves within each frequency band are called by different names; beginning at the low frequency (long wavelength) end of the spectrum these are: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays at the high-frequency (short wavelength) end. The electromagnetic waves in each of these bands have different characteristics, such as how they are produced, how they interact with matter, and their practical applications. The limit for long wavelengths is the size of the universe itself, while it is thought that the short wavelength limit is in the vicinity of the Planck length.[4] Gamma rays, X-rays, and high ultraviolet are classified as ionizing radiation as their photons have enough energy to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions.

In most of the frequency bands above, a technique called spectroscopy can be used to physically separate waves of different frequencies, producing a spectrum showing the constituent frequencies. Spectroscopy is used to study the interactions of electromagnetic waves with matter.[5] Other technological uses are described under electromagnetic radiation.

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Britannica

Introduction

The entire distribution of electromagnetic radiation according to frequency or wavelength. Although all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, they do so at a wide range of frequencies, wavelengths, and photon energies. The electromagnetic spectrum comprises the span of all electromagnetic radiation and consists of many subranges, commonly referred to as portions, such as visible light or ultraviolet radiation. The various portions bear different names based on differences in behaviour in the emission, transmission, and absorption of the corresponding waves and also based on their different practical applications. There are no precise accepted boundaries between any of these contiguous portions, so the ranges tend to overlap.

The electromagnetic spectrum. The narrow range of visible light is
shown enlarged at the right. | Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the lowest to the highest frequency (longest to shortest wavelength), includes all radio waves (e.g., commercial radio and television, microwaves, radar), infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. Nearly all frequencies and wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation can be used for spectroscopy.

Type of Electromagnetic Radiation: Radio waves, infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays are all types of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves have the longest wavelength, and gamma rays have the shortest wavelength. | Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

 

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

• 
  electromagnetic radiation: The electromagnetic spectrum
  The brief account of familiar phenomena given above surveyed electromagnetic radiation from low frequencies of ν (radio waves) to exceedingly high values of ν (gamma rays). Going from the ν values of radio waves to those of visible light is like comparing the…
• 
  electromagnetic radiation: Forms of electromagnetic radiation
  …the different regions of the spectrum are described in this section.…
• 
  light: The electromagnetic spectrum
  Heinrich Hertz’s production in 1888 of what are now called radio waves, his verification that these waves travel at the same speed as visible light, and his measurements of their reflection, refraction, diffraction, and polarization properties were a convincing demonstration of the existence…

ADDITIONAL CHARTS

Time is an Entropic System - To Go Back In Time is to Reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics

 

PHYSICS

More Accurate Clocks Unleash More Disorder in The Universe, Physicists Say

BEN TURNER, LIVE SCIENCE

18 MAY 2021

What's the price of an accurate clock? Entropy, a new study has revealed.

Entropy – or disorder – is created every time a clock ticks. Now scientists working with a tiny clock have proven a simple relationship: The more accurate a clock runs, the more entropy it generates.

"If you want your clock to be more accurate, you've got to pay for it," study co-author Natalia Ares, a physicist at the University of Oxford, told Live Science. "Every time we measure time, we are increasing the Universe's entropy."

As we go forward in time, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a system must increase. Known as the "arrow of time", entropy is one of the few quantities in physics that sets time to go in a particular direction – from the past, where entropy was low, to the future, where it will be high.

This tendency for disorder to grow in the Universe explains many things, such as why it's easier to mix ingredients together than separate them out, or why headphone wires get so intricately tangled together in pants pockets. It's also through this growing disorder that entropy is wedded so intimately to our sense of time.

A famous scene in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five demonstrates how differently entropy makes one direction of time look to the other by playing World War II in reverse: Bullets are sucked from wounded men; fires are shrunk, gathered into bombs, stacked in neat rows, and separated into composite minerals; and the reversed arrow of time undoes the disorder and devastation of war.

This intimate connection between time and entropy has fascinated scientists for decades. Machines, such as clocks, also produce entropy in the form of heat dissipated to their surroundings.

Physicists have been able to prove that a tiny quantum clock – a type of atomic clock that uses laser-cooled atoms that jump at highly regular intervals – creates more disorder the more accurately it measures time.

But until now, it has been very difficult to prove that larger, more mechanically complex clocks create more entropy the more accurate they get, even if the idea sounds good in theory.

"Clocks are in some way like little steam engines – you need to put work into them to measure time," Ares said, where the "work is the energy transfer needed to make mechanical devices like clocks run.

"In order to get that regular tick, tick, tick, you have to get the machine going. That means you need to invest in entropy production."

To test this idea, the researchers built a simplified clock made up of a 50-nanometer-thick, 1.5-millimeter-long membrane stretched between two tiny posts that they vibrated with pulses of electricity.

By counting every flex up and down as a tick, the team showed that more powerful electrical signals made the clock tick more regularly and accurately, but at the cost of adding more heat – and therefore more entropy – to the system.

Seeing this relationship between entropy and accuracy play out in a device much larger than a quantum clock has given the researchers confidence that their findings could be universal.

Perhaps if clocks didn't produce any entropy, they'd be just as likely to run backwards as they do forwards, and the more entropy they generate the more they're protected from stutters and backwards fluctuations.

"We don't know for certain yet, but what we've found – for both our clock and for quantum clocks – is that there's a proportional relationship between accuracy and entropy," Ares said. "It might not always be a linear relationship for other clocks, but it does look like the accuracy is bounded by the laws of thermodynamics."

Aside from being useful for designing clocks and other devices in the future, the researchers view their findings as laying the groundwork for further exploration of how the large scale laws of thermodynamics apply to tiny nanosized devices.

"We now have so much control over these tiny devices, and are able to measure them with so much precision, that we're rediscovering thermodynamics at a completely new scale." Ares said. "It's like the Industrial Revolution at the nanoscale."

The researchers published their findings May 6 in the journal Physical Review X.

Process Christianity, the History of Computer Languages, and Quantum Computing

Process Christianity, the History of Computer

Languages, and Quantum Computing

by R.E. Slater

Introduction

Would you expect to find a post on Digital and Quantum Computing on a Christian website?! Well, why not? Christians should be interested in everything to help mold our religious worlds. We should be expanding our religious reality at every opportunity. For myself, I wish to allow doubt and uncertainty help lead and inform my religious beliefs. Plus I had a lifetime of service in the technology industry including a major portion of my schooling in mathematics and the sciences. So, I am always interested in learning something new!

I will here digress but you should know that further below will be a load of information that may be explored and learned on your own from early classical computing to quantum coding online in the cloud. But first, let me provide a tie-in from what I describe as "Process Christianity" to Process-based Sciences as they are being affected by Whiteheadian Process Philosophy in the foreseeable future.

Here, at Relevancy22, I try to envisage God and God's World around us. How we might fit in and work with God and with God's creation. And how our every thought might help reconstruct a new point of process-based human progress towards accomplishing healing and restitution between ourselves and the world at large.

Think of the world of computing as a helpful vaccine given to a pandemic world trying to rediscover it's humanity and presence in the world of nature. Computing across all industries, including greentech, will be able to do just that - nanocomputing, biologic and molecular computing, organic computing, AI computing, and so on.

Whatever we touch let us touch it for good, give it to the masses, and use any funds received to alleviate the world's troubles. I suppose this is a naive view but we all know our history how the machinations of man always screws things up. So stay noble, be wise, and invest when and where you can since money talks. And always remember you're first principles. Thus Process Christianity to help remind us that we but a wee part in a very large, and complex, universe.

One last, this is also an apt goal for any future worlds forming themselves into (cosmo)ecological societies and ecoworld civilizations. Don't you LOVE it?!! Computing and cosmological goals!  :0

The Progress of Computing Logic

Today I was curious about the progress of computing logic and languages. From its early silicon days to the quantum computing research and applications presently being undertaken. The logic basis of constructing synthetic machine language is dependent upon the medium used.

Whereas in the past a form of linear thinking or sequentially-based (Boolean+, Many-Valued) mathematics might have been applicably related to the silicon world of electromagnetism, in this next world of quantum materials I am guessing a form of "fuzzy logic" (imprecise free association) or, perhaps more properly, a form of "free logic" (unassociated free variables from objects), must be the minimum starting point. In psychological terms we might even consider "free association" (unassociated forms divested of relationships).

In fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1 both inclusive. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1.

The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by Lotfi Zadeh. Fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski.

Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and utilising data and information that are vague and lack certainty.

vs.

A free logic is a logic with fewer existential presuppositions than classical logic. Free logics may allow for terms that do not denote any object. Free logics may also allow models that have an empty domain. A free logic with the latter property is an inclusive logic.

The point of free logic, though, is to have a formalism that implies no particular ontology, but that merely makes an interpretation of Quine both formally possible and simple. An advantage of this is that formalizing theories of singular existence in free logic brings out their implications for easy analysis. Lambert takes the example of the theory proposed by Wesley C. Salmon and George Nahknikian, which is that to exist is to be self-identical.

vs.

Free association is the expression (as by speaking or writing) of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis (and also in psychodynamic theory) which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and colleague, Josef Breuer.

Freud described it as such: "The importance of free association is that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than repeating the ideas of the analyst; they work through their own material, rather than parroting another's suggestions".

We Live in Relational Worlds

What cannot be escaped is the idea of the relationship of things to things. Yet in this regard to either process mechanics or, process-based quantum physics, those relationships are severed and may freely associate with any other non-dissimilar relationship whether sensical or not.

As example, the picture of a well-ordered businessman or businesswoman in personal psychic crisis deconstructing himself or herself into elemental forms of human reconnection to self and society. Or the chemical bonds found is radical compounds freed from their ionic bonds to recompose into entirely new, non-historical configurations.

Tenet Trailer - Spoiler Alert

In the quantum world we will discover a new way of imagining cause and effect. Perhaps, similar to the TENET movie, by placing effect before cause in non-temporal terms of relational matter to matter freed of temporal bounds... yes, I disabused the movie's premise. Forgive me. I was freely associating :)

But in truth a photon of light has been shown to have virtually travelled its path before actually traveling its historical path, so welcome to the world of the strange found in the quantum world of the paradoxical.

Process Metaphysics

Last thought, as Metaphysicists examine the nature of the reality, or as Philosophers do the same, we must similarly ask ourselves the deep questions of life's material processes, of its organic processes, of even its unseen - some say, spiritual - connections between itself and one another. It is within this complexity we live-and-breathe-and-have-our-being which provides yet another fundamental direction to a purpose-filled world granted (process) theological regard of the Divine in relationship to the inherited immortal.

Inherited in that this world is but an organic process spun off from God's own Self. And immortal in that in process events, as processes live and die, come and go, its overall "manufacture" between ever evolving and freely associating event processes will live on-and-on-and-on even as its Creator-Author does. The very nature of the cosmos is immortal when defined in process terms.

Thus, we should learn to see life from the theological perspective. Let it override the perspective of the metaphysician, the philosopher, and the quantum world of wonder whose threshold we step upon as for the first time. We live in a process world of healing and wellbeing should we allow it. Let's do. And let's together see where it takes us.

Conclusion

Below I have laid out a graphic history of computing languages. A Family Tree of sorts. These iterations have all occurred in my lifetime with more to come. As example, Apache UNIX (2013) is being used by Databricks as an enterprise-wide computing platform in the Cloud. It is replacing all previous enterprise versions of corporate/proprietary UNIX solutions. Thus, IBM and HP had also sought this avenue to stay up with open-source code branded committers.

But what will computing firms do in the future as quantum computing comes on line? Stay to faster iterations of silicon-based computer languages or replace the older logic and language systems altogether with something more pertinent to the medium used? And what kind of quantum logic should be used?

Hence my post today. While thinking specifically, learn to also think universally. See Tim Eastman's discussion in an earlier post a month ago for more discussion here. Especially in his paper and the notes given at the end of the post. It speaks to the developing world of quantum logic and language.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

May 7, 2021

Physics Update: Turning Light Into Matter

This shows theories describing light and matter interactions. Credit: Oliver Pike, Imperial College London

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-scientists-year-quest.html#jCp

Imperial College London physicists have discovered how to
create matter from light - a feat thought impossible when
the idea was first theorised 80 years ago.

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-05-scientists-year-quest.html

May 2014

In just one day over several cups of coffee in a tiny office in Imperial's Blackett Physics Laboratory, three physicists worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934.

Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron – the simplest method of turning light into matter ever predicted. The calculation was found to be theoretically sound but Breit and Wheeler said that they never expected anybody to physically demonstrate their prediction. It has never been observed in the laboratory and past experiments to test it have required the addition of massive high-energy particles.

The new research, published in Nature Photonics, shows for the first time how Breit and Wheeler's theory could be proven in practice. This 'photon-photon collider', which would convert light directly into matter using technology that is already available, would be a new type of high-energy physics experiment. This experiment would recreate a process that was important in the first 100 seconds of the universe and that is also seen in gamma ray bursts, which are the biggest explosions in the universe and one of physics' greatest unsolved mysteries.

The scientists had been investigating unrelated problems in fusion energy when they realised what they were working on could be applied to the Breit-Wheeler theory. The breakthrough was achieved in collaboration with a fellow theoretical physicist from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, who happened to be visiting Imperial.

Demonstrating the Breit-Wheeler theory would provide the final jigsaw piece of a physics puzzle which describes the simplest ways in which light and matter interact (see image in notes to editors). The six other pieces in that puzzle, including Dirac's 1930 theory on the annihilation of electrons and positrons and Einstein's 1905 theory on the photoelectric effect, are all associated with Nobel Prize-winning research (see image).

Professor Steve Rose from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London said: "Despite all physicists accepting the theory to be true, when Breit and Wheeler first proposed the theory, they said that they never expected it be shown in the laboratory. Today, nearly 80 years later, we prove them wrong. What was so surprising to us was the discovery of how we can create matter directly from light using the technology that we have today in the UK. As we are theorists we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment."

The collider experiment that the scientists have proposed involves two key steps. First, the scientists would use an extremely powerful high-intensity laser to speed up electrons to just below the speed of light. They would then fire these electrons into a slab of gold to create a beam of photons a billion times more energetic than visible light.

The next stage of the experiment involves a tiny gold can called a hohlraum (German for 'empty room'). Scientists would fire a high-energy laser at the inner surface of this gold can, to create a thermal radiation field, generating light similar to the light emitted by stars.

They would then direct the photon beam from the first stage of the experiment through the centre of the can, causing the photons from the two sources to collide and form electrons and positrons. It would then be possible to detect the formation of the electrons and positrons when they exited the can.

Lead researcher Oliver Pike who is currently completing his PhD in plasma physics, said: "Although the theory is conceptually simple, it has been very difficult to verify experimentally. We were able to develop the idea for the collider very quickly, but the experimental design we propose can be carried out with relative ease and with existing technology. Within a few hours of looking for applications of hohlraums outside their traditional role in fusion energy research, we were astonished to find they provided the perfect conditions for creating a photon collider. The race to carry out and complete the experiment is on!"

More information: Pike, O, J. et al. 2014. 'A photon–photon collider in a vacuum hohlraum'. Nature Photonics, 18 May 2014: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.95

Journal reference: Nature Photonics

Provided by Imperial College London