BanterinBoson

If that be the case, then I'd love to stay and banter with you guys, but politics. Swanson, the video should be cued at 3:58: I'm no einstein, but I can relate to the not kissing up bit.... especially merely to cater to an anally-retentive obsession with topic relevancy of a discussion that will never be viewed by another carbon-based entity once buried among the pages of long-dead topics. Or perhaps the condition is a Napoleonesque desire to subjugate; either way, I'm not hanging around to find out while in the face of 1000s of dying dime-a-dozen forums who really should be doing what they can to keep folks around rather than barking orders to run people off. https://trends.builtwith.com/cms/forum-software I just need to spend more time studying and less time posting. Y'all have fun with your organizational compulsions.

Are you saying directing the focus to me was not directing the focus to me? I'm not clear on what you mean by "Please re-read and apply this metric, and you'll see there is nothing personal about it." I don't want to get anyone in trouble, so it's not a big deal; I'll just move along rather than entertaining the prospect of arguing my side since there is nothing good that can come from that: either I win and get Studiot in trouble or I lose... either way, I lose. I feel there is too much emotional involvement in this thread and it's much easier to pose the question on a different site with different people who cannot possibly be emotionally involved (yet). It's like expecting a pay raise without needing to change employers; unfortunately, we have to bounce around to find better deals. I have no idea about the internals of lasers... all I know is they cut steel by melting which seems hot to me. So it's non-mechanical? Are lasers mechanical? They would have to be in order to do work, as you said before. What about the definition regarding entropy? What about the definition saying the only distinction between heat and work is direction? Simply saying they are all correct does not help me. Cool as in cool or cool as in cool? Negative temperatures are hotter than any positive temperatures.

You'll have to elaborate on the distinction because it's not immediately obvious and my mindreading machine is in the shop. So you accept that 1+2+3+... = -1/12? Yes, but then he goes on to say "That means there should be an attractive force between the metallic plates, which also seems ludicrous, since classical physics suggests there should be no force." There should be a force, which is ludicrous because an erroneous method of physics says there should be no force. Therefore, why is it ludicrous that there should be a force? Can I make a peach tree produce apples? Yes, it's called grafting and almost all fruit trees you buy will be grafted onto a different kind of tree. Some folks have one tree producing several different kinds of fruit. Could I make the apple portion of the tree produce another kind of fruit? Not me personally, but I'm sure humanity can monkey with the dna and make it happen eventually. Then you'll say it's the dna that represents nature and a tree will always produce what the dna says it will and now we're on a slippery slope where you'll always have a part of nature that you will call the law until that is broken and then you'll cling to the next more-fundamental law while never conceding how humanity pushes nature around. You may say it's a law that information cannot be transmitted faster than light, but what would you say after we read one day that they've done it through quantum entanglement or who-knows-what? Well, then it's a more-fundamental law governing the process. And then we break that one and here comes yet another proclamation that it's an even-more-fundamental law. On and on the slippery slope goes. Now if we turn the slope the other way, then we can see all the "laws" we currently break today. Or, should I say, all the regularities they once called laws. The only law is what is possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxi-IUnCN_8 I watched, er, listened to this video about einstein last night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goDFoYeyQ4Y In it, they said he published a paper and almost no one cared. If not for planck recognizing einstein, who knows where we'd be today. In the video they said if einstein had gone to college, he would not have been very good at kissing-up to a senior professor and therefore we can thank our lucky stars that he was never subjected to university politics. The way people operate and as tribalistic as they are, I feel entitled to be condescending. No one wants to honestly learn or teach, but they want to strut around showing off their big egos. If folks didn't act like such jerks, perhaps we'd be a little further along by now. Boltzmann killed himself. Galileo had to work around the church. Newton gave lectures to empty classrooms. Edison robbed Tesla. The smartest man in the US piddles his time on a farm instead of being seized upon and utilized in productive capacities by universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard H. Aiken. That's gotta be the all-time best aphorism. Of course... more people throwing their weight around to hinder the free-exchange of ideas. Make sense. See above. Anything to prevent being wrong LOL! I don't need evidence that laws change; you need evidence that they don't in order to call them laws. That seems a well-articulated argument to preclude the belief in laws. Yes, the atom was named such from the Greek atomos which means undivided which is from tomos that means divided. Some philosophers consider the whole universe to be the atomos and any "things" or "events" inside are just arbitrary divisions of a continuous process.

Define evidence. Why does it matter if it is off topic? Why fight nature? Nevermind. I'll figure it out or ask the question on quora or something. Let's focus on other things. Yes It's not important. Yup Either a photon pops into existence all at once or it evolves into existence over time. Claiming a photon is a particle that cannot be divided necessitates that it pops into existence all at once because it cannot be divided (there can't be half a photon at one instance). Therefore, there is a discontinuity in reality meaning the particle appears, fully formed, in one instant. And since we can't have discontinuities in reality, then the photon cannot be a particle. How? If E=hf, then how would energy be divided? I've asked before for help in understanding how co2 can radiate IR in all directions, and if E=hf, then why does it matter that some of the IR goes to space and some to earth if E is purely a function of F. It seems intuitive to divide a 360 radiation pattern into 90 degree sections and then say one section has 1/4 of the energy, but E is purely a function of F and can't be divided like that. I've been confused for 2 weeks on this problem and have all but begged for someone to help. Not saying you're wrong, but what is the evidence for that? I'm curious. I wonder why it would be that there is a smallest size. It's not that I don't believe it because it argues against infinitely smaller sizes and I find that sensible. Could it have something to do with the smallest wavelength? Since waves don't have a size, then maybe it's better to suggest it has something to do with a highest frequency. If we take the highest-energy gamma ray known and then add more energy, what happens? I'm guessing it gains mass which interacts with the Higgs field and, consequently, slows down to become what we call a "particle". Perhaps a neutrino? What do you think of that idea? Anyway, if we work under the assumption that there is a highest frequency, then there is a smallest wavelength and that could be the reason there is a smallest size. Thoughts? No, I don't fully understand it. Thanks for looking. I think you may have to actually engage in farming or gardening to know what I'm talking about because "Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced and even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it." - John Keats. It's like trying to describe what "red" means to a blind person and it's one of those instances where if you don't understand, then I can't explain it. We'll have to drop this topic otherwise we'll keep going round and round and it's not that important.

Do you have evidence to support that assertion? All I can imagine that you could say is that the philosophy of science has demanded that all meaningful statements be supported by empirical evidence, which is itself just a philosophical construct without supporting empirical evidence. Everyone has a metaphysical assumption that they can't prove. I like this: (amusingly, the energy of a closed universe always works out to zero according to this definition) What's the problem? + + - = 0 and that's the way it ought to be otherwise there is something unaccounted for. If there were infinite energy, then one infinite positive would not cancel the other because infinity - infinity is not zero. Good. Glad we agree! Why could it absorb half? I never allowed for that with what I said. I said it would absorb 100% of the photon because of resonance. Resonance is the point of 180 degree wave cancellation and therefore 100% absorption. That point of absorption, defined by the point of resonance, is what causes the energy levels of the electron to be what they are. That is the assertion I would like for someone to explain to me why it is wrong. 3 people now have told me I am wrong, but none have showed me why I am wrong. Why is it not that resonance determines the energy levels of the electron? Composed of localized waves which is what a golf ball is composed of. Cutting a cake in half will not cut the temperature in half. The guy I linked to said you could, but it would only result in the creation of 2 new quarks. Cool. Copying statement here for reference: It is better to believe there is a god and to be wrong than to believe there isn't because our paradigm prevents transcendental thinking. Why would you disagree? By disagreeing, you are saying it is better to have a confining paradigm than to erroneously believe in god. By having a confining paradigm, you cannot discover what's outside the paradigm. But erroneously believing in god merely needs correction, yet the paradigm is still wide open. Choosing to believe in god or not wasn't a part of it. The problem was about what mindset to have and whether it is better to outright reject what doesn't have evidence or to believe what doesn't have evidence. Both are logically wrong, but which is least wrong? That was the point einstein was making which I feel was summed nicely by Blake in "A fool who persists in his folly will eventually become wise." Well, obviously, you admit you're wrong because you discover you're wrong. If you don't discover it, then you can't admit it. Discovering isn't the problem, it's not being able to admit error and it's particularly worrisome in folks who have devoted their whole lives to an idea because swallowing that pill is nigh impossible. I'd be interested in seeing those experiments. Claiming they are indivisible in this context is effectively claiming they are particles that cannot be divided instead of claiming they are waves that make no sense to divide. The reason a photon is indivisible is that it's a wave rather than a particle that cannot be divided and here you are using that "indivisible particleness" to necessitate that therefore the particle magically pops into existence as a discontinuity of reality because you think you may have seen experiments that say so (within some margin of error). I'd like to see the experiments so I can sort out what is really happening. Telling nature what to do doesn't equate to verbal commands, but instead of telling bugs to leave crops alone, we spray insecticides which tells them to leave it alone. People have grown crops without seed... ever hear of cloning? lol! They say "Plant pears for your heirs" because it takes decades before a pear tree will yield fruit when grown from seed, yet cloning a pear tree will yield pears the same year. Farming is completely unnatural. They cut down the trees and plants that have competed successfully to establish dominance and have replaced them with plants that have no chance for survival outside of the constant nursing we provide because they have evolved in an entirely different ecosystem. They monkey with the dna, accomplishing who knows what, then turning the frankensteins loose on the planet. Suffice it to say, telling nature what to do is what it means to be human. That seems to be the purpose of intellect... to tell dumb nature how to be better. Agreed.

You contradicted yourself. Either it is instant or it is not. You were attempting to show that 1+2+3+... should be the intuitive answer of infinity or, anyway, much larger than -1/12. "intuitive" was just a label to save time. The distinction that CM doesn't make reliable predictions at small scales is irrelevant because small scales was the topic and therefore CM should have never been mentioned in the entire article. I never implied a peach tree would produce apples, but planting a peach tree in the desert is fighting nature which is evidenced by the fact that you'd have to nurse it constantly just to keep it alive. In harmony with nature is planting peaches in areas where peaches have evolved to live. Laws of nature are observed regularities and some regularities are more regular than others and what we call a law of nature and what we call a preference of nature is just an arbitrary and artificial distinction. We can break some laws for a while just like swimming against the current, but eventually the current will reassert itself. Well there should be one. You think it's unreasonable because I expect too much, but that doesn't change the fact that there should be one. Look how this topic has evolved. Do you really think anyone, besides the AI bots, will ever read this thread? All this organization is wasted energy... we're lucky to have one person read it once. It's more fruitful to have it evolve how it wants rather than try to control nature I thought of that when I typed it and already knew a mobius strip is not a coin. I shouldn't have to. But in the day when they thought the atomos were indivisible particles, if I had said there is no such thing, then some guy would have said "You can't tell nature what to do." You see, it's not nature who I am telling Well, we know of no law saying that laws cannot spontaneously change. All the laws are is observed regularities. To assume that they are eternal and unbending laws is an error.

It is because you focus on ME and not the TOPIC. I would enjoy talking to you more if I were not the subject of the conversation. Perhaps YOU should start a topic in the psychology section I do not remember steadfastly refusing to discuss anything. Since the topic has now changed to psychology, here is the problem: I actually do like you, but interacting with you makes me feel like crap and the situation is out of my control because I cannot spontaneously make myself as smart as you'd like me to be. It seems no matter what I say, you're going to find some fault in how I replied... and it's not that I'm steadfastly against improving myself, but the frequency of occurrence is approaching 100% which leads me to believe there is no way to live up to your standards and any effort is futile. I'll concede to you that I am not the most observant person and I'm always the one who walks all over a snake without ever seeing it or makes a chess move without seeing the bishop lurking in the corner, so it's very possible I read right over a point you made and didn't see it, but for you to say my mind is made up is an offense against my character and integrity and is tantamount to calling me a liar. It's true I tend to stick to my guns, but I will not be an example of cognitive dissonance. If you show me evidence that I should change my mind, then I will change it and any evidence you think you have to the contrary is likely a misinterpretation on your part or perhaps a lack of perception on mine, but I assure you it is not because I am unable to be wrong. In this thread I was wrong about gamma rays and I was wrong about thinking EMWs affected matter regardless of charge and I'm sure I'll be wrong about more things, but I can't say I'm wrong until someone shows me how I am. I agree it is fascinating, but quite honestly, I'm considering taking the topic to another board because it has gotten too personal here and the answer you supplied, I can't make any sense of it. Perhaps there is a language barrier. Anyway, it's a cryptic answer and therefore the upvote indicates a tribalistic uniting against a common enemy (ie me), so that's my cue to seek greener pastures. And this answer is simply a statement; not an explanation. Another statement; not explanation. Lasers are much hotter than ambient. I asked how you would define it and that is the best you can do? Thanks, everyone, for your help, but I'm taking further questions to a different arena.

Love builds, but it may build destructive things. It depends on perspective. If you love your garden and seek to build it, then you're going to hate the pests and seek to destroy them because they threaten what you love. If you love your pet and seek to build a healthy animal, you will have to hate the parasites because they threaten the health of your pet. Do you have to be proud of your pet in order to hate the parasites? I'll leave it for you to decide. How do you define humility? We should carefully define terms before determining opposites since words only mean what you want them to mean. So before beginning any discussion we have to sort out what means what in order to communicate because what we are actually comparing are concepts where the words are merely labels for convenient conveyance of the concepts we have in mind. Often, disputes arise because folks are unable to agree on definitions to words, so determining agreeable definitions should be the first step to all conversation. Arrogance defined by dictionary.com is an offensive display of superiority or self-importance. By that definition (which is not the ultimate authority), arrogance is one of many possible results of pride (defined as the desire to command respect). There are 7 definitions for pride as a noun and 1 as a verb, and none capture the meaning I have in mind, but only aspects of it because pride is much deeper than a high or inordinate opinion of one's own importance, merit, or superiority. In fact, one can be proud of their humility and that concept is central to the idea of trading chains of iron for chains of gold where once we were proud of our sins which we boasted before the guys and now we're proud of our virtues and boast before the lord. It's the same trap made from different chains and therefore the potential for boasting is integral to pride. Paul said, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." That one verse does away with the practice of religion entirely because if there exists ANY work that can be done to improve our condition, then that accomplishment will be a reason to brag and pride comes back in. The whole point is to realize that there is nothing we can do and therefore no reason to boast about anything and that faith releases us from the grip of pride and that is what saves us while the ego is the aspect of us that dies. I like this short story: The Sly Man and the Devil Gurdjieff said that in order to be born, we must first die and in order to die, we must first be awake. I think you're on the right track and even if you are wrong here or there, you will eventually become right as long as you continue sniffing in the direction you are heading. I've gone as far as wondering if the whole and singular purpose of life (if life were to have a purpose) is to learn to overcome pride since no proud entity could ever be trusted in a situation of power and if there is a graduation to a higher existence, one cannot move up while lugging an ego; hence, why the meek inherit the earth and only the pure in heart can see god.

I'd be content just knowing how to figure it for one abstract molecule without the complications of the entire atmosphere. Reinventing wheels teaches me how to make wheels That's a helpful link and I will have to study that more. The last comment on the page tipped me off to Stefan-Boltzmann which allows me to describe power in terms of area of a blackbody, which is what co2 is at a certain frequency. At least I can say "this many watts goes to space and that many heads to earth", but first I have to decide how much area a co2 molecule has and what T will be. The Beer's law requires an optical depth, so I'm not sure that applies here. I'm still struggling to learn the nomenclature: Roughly, the temperature of a body at rest is a measure of the mean of the energy of the translational, vibrational and rotational motions of matter's particle constituents, such as molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. The full variety of these kinetic motions, along with potential energies of particles, and also occasionally certain other types of particle energy in equilibrium with these, make up the total internal energy of a substance. Internal energy is loosely called the heat energy or thermal energy in conditions when no work is done upon the substance by its surroundings, or by the substance upon the surroundings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_temperature That looseness is what makes this difficult and the last thing I want to start doing is associating heat with stored energy. Maybe the best way to attack this is to make a spreadsheet of every term (heat, internal energy, thermal energy, radiance, spectral radiance, radiant flux, temperature, thermodynamic temperature, yada yada) so I can have it all in front of me to make sense of. The math and the concepts are straightforward, so the language is the only barrier. Huh? Why do you want to confuse me like that? lol! How is light from a laser not heat? How is a fluorescent light doing work? I'm getting a variety of answers: 1) In thermodynamics, heat is often contrasted with work: heat applies to individual particles (such as atoms or molecules), work applies to objects (or a system as a whole). Heat involves stochastic (or random) motion equally distributed among all degrees of freedom, while work is directional, confined to one or more specific degrees of freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat 2) Work is any energy transfer that does not carry entropy. Heat, on the other hand, is any energy transfer that carries entropy. 3) Work is the mechanical transfer of energy to a system or from a system by an external force on it. Heat is the non-mechanical transfer of energy from the environment to the system or from the system to the environment because of a temperature difference between the two. The conversion of mechanical energy (work) to heat is very efficient, nearly 100%. But the conversion of thermal energy (heat) to work is not so because heat is a low grade energy. https://www.quora.com/In-thermodynamics-what-is-the-difference-between-work-and-heat-I-was-thinking-about-this-when-studying-Carnot-Cycles-and-adiabatic-processes-How-can-a-system-do-work-in-isolation-What-is-it-doing-work-on-Where-is-that-energy-going I like this one: 4) You are right. Microscopically, work and heat are just about the same. Both involve molecular collisions transfer energy from one object to the other. Work involves a kind of "coherent" transfer in a manner of speaking, in which the collisions are predominantly, and to an extreme degree, in one direction. Also, typically the force is applied to one location on the object. And importantly, the boundary of the system is displaced. (E.g. translation or deformation) On the other hand, transfer of energy by heat is "incoherent", many directions, and typically in all directions. And importantly, the boundary of the system is not displaced. Finally, everyday phenomena fall into one or the other category, and they differ in their macroscopic behavior. Loosely speaking, when heat is transfered the temperature rises. When work is done, the boundary of the system changes. Of course adding heat generally also results in the boundary moving [say, expanding], and work generally results in a temperature change [Joule's experiment]. I'm trying to motivate the macroscopic separation between work and heat without a lengthy discussion. To the engineers who first worked all of this out, the very existence of atoms was unknown. To them, the separation between heat and work was very clear. They had little reason to view them as manifestations of the same microscopic process. They thought that heat was a physical fluid. In any event, their remarkable achievements have stood the test of time. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135539/why-work-w-and-heat-q-are-different-concepts What do you think? What's the best way to write distinct definitions for work and heat? Regardless how we excite the atom (photon or collision) it is still resonance that determines the energy level of the electron, right? So it's the mass and bond strengths that determine the energy levels. I don't understand why that would not be correct. Here is what I said before: It seems like it would be the resonance of the atom that determines the point where a photon would be absorbed and that would define the difference in energy levels. Not the other way around, which is the difference in energy levels determines if a photon is absorbed and that defines the resonance because it doesn't make sense that way. It's putting the cart before the horse. Right, as a function of mass and bond strengths which determine both resonance and energy levels. Well, I wasn't done replying to your post as I wasn't done studying it in hopes of replying with something that would be to your satisfaction. Not at all and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion as I took special care to prevent anyone from coming to that conclusion. Anyway, I've discovered the limits to my patience for walking on eggshells only to still be incapable of making you happy, so whatever. I'll figure it out with or without your help and if having your help means the continual negotiation of derogatory implication then I'd prefer to go-it alone. Thanks for trying. Thanks

The opposite of love is hate because love has no meaning without the contrasting backdrop of hate and in order to love, we must hate what threatens what we love. One cannot exist without the other. Neither love nor hate requires the existence of indifference to give meaning and if indifference is the opposite of love, it must also be the opposite of hate and that's nonsense since something can't have 2 opposites. Graphically: Love..... Indifference.... Hate. It's clear that the poles are love/hate and the midpoint is indifference. Positive..... No charge.... Negative. The midpoint = the summation of and consequent cancellation of the poles. The opposite of indifference is difference, obviously, since "in" = negation. So, it's care/not-care. If you hate, you care. If you love, you care. If you neither, then you don't care. Therefore, I would describe indifference as the absence of the love/hate duality or the summation or unification of the duality which is a cancellation. You are definitely on the trail of something right with your observations on pride, but the opposite of pride is humility, and humility is the beginning of wisdom while pride precedes a fall. Love doesn't always build because what about he who loves destruction? Does not the devil love the devilish? But I wholeheartedly resonate with your assessment on the profoundness of pride and I feel that the pre-adulterated purpose of christianity, buddhism and hinduism shared the common goal of attaining humility; now they're mostly yet another form of one-upmanship; subtly or not.

Ok, I understand all that. So how do I figure the amount of energy, heat, whatever-it's-called absorbed by the co2 molecule at the right IR frequency? And after I've done that, then how do I figure the amount radiated back to earth in a 90 degree cone? Also, I need help with nomenclature. Light = heat because heat is energy in travel. Is that right? What is the energy inside a vibrating atom called? Kinetic, I know, but does it have a more specific name? Thanks! Yeah, but that's hijacking for convenience and not formal definition. The numerator and denominator are opposites and so in language the convention carries over for true/false, on/off, etc. It is also the numerator in terms of the denominator, as you wrote it, so speciation in terms of evolution instead of speciation in terms of creation. Computers have changed our way of thinking and now "/" often means a subset, so it would be Evolution/Speciation/next subset which is a lot like the reciprocal of the "in terms of" definition, so none of it really deviates far from the mathematical meaning of the symbol. Now that's deep! Good one

I don't understand what you're trying to say there. If the zeta function describes what happens between the plates and the answer is unintuitive, but experiments confirm the unintuitive answer, then how does that prove the answer should be intuitive? It is a contradiction. He said: "classical physics doesn't reckon with the weird effects you see when you look at the world at very small scales" "That means there should be an attractive force between the metallic plates, which also seems ludicrous, since classical physics suggests there should be no force." If he has already determined that CM cannot make predictions, then why is he using it to make predictions? Essentially he has said, "There shouldn't be an attractive force because CM says so even though CM has no capability to say anything." As much as you say that, I beginning to wonder if it's some sort of wishful chant lol I tell nature how to behave all the time. That's the essence of farming... we bring in plants that nature would prefer to be elsewhere and force them to grow with fertilizers and then fight nature's desire to have to bugs eat the crops with insecticides, etc, etc. Human existence is essentially telling nature what to do. It's exceedingly rare to find someone who lives in harmony with nature. I think your thinking is erroneous. If I say there should be a unified theory and you say most people will disagree with my sentiment, then I'm betting you are wrong in that prediction. Because, if you are right, then there would be no motivation to find one. You are essentially saying that it's better to have 2 theories than 1. There should be a lot of things and just because I can't solve the world's problems does not make what should be any less true. So you agree with me then that a particle, like a golf ball, cannot go through two slits at the same time? I'm not sure. Once upon a time I thought it was, but now I don't know. Since it can go through 2 slits at once, I suppose it is not. You said, "Energy is a property. If you want to talk about fundamental reality, we have a philosophy section." I said, "Are you saying physics is independent from reality?" Your reply is "no". So if I want to talk about reality, why must I leave the physics section to do so? Falling up is not logically impossible, but having an 'up' without a 'down' is impossible. Can nature create a one-sided coin? Nature does what it wants inside the bounds of what is possible and laws of nature are merely observed regularities because no law exists in nature except that of what is possible. So it would seem that physics itself has imposed upon nature by declaring regularities to be laws that nature cannot break and if we work under the assumption of not being able to tell nature how to operate, then we've conceded that the laws are not laws and could change at any moment and therefore we have no construct under which to function. Can you imagine the ramifications if c were a little faster tomorrow and a little slower by the weekend?

A sine wave generator is not outputting a single frequency? Why all the effort to distinguish single frequencies and claim they are infinite? I can't see the goal where this is leading and I can't see how the distinction is possible. If a single frequency must last for infinite time, then there will never come a day where infinite time has past and therefore single frequencies can never exist. Oh I see. That's an interesting observation. If there were infinite energy and matter were created from it, then infinite energy would still remain. Why is that not scientifically impossible? I'd consider the loosest of definitions of energy conservation to be plenty sufficient to prevent the idea of infinite energy. You wouldn't? I don't see why that necessitates a particle. Interaction determines point-like behavior because interaction of a wave with an atom determines discrete energy level differences at resonance which absorbs an entire photon. I just learned that a wave is not reflected, but re-emitted. The original wave passes straight through and combines with the re-emitted wave to experience a shift in phase. So because a wine glass will resonate at one frequency, then can we infer sound is a particle? An atom will absorb when it resonates because the charges emit 180 degree waves that cancel the photon while all the energy of the photon will transfer to kicking the electrons up to the next level. That doesn't mean the photon is a particle and it seems the fact that it is absorbed at all is evidence for it not being a particle. Discreteness doesn't mean particle, does it? Have a look at the answer designated by 179 upvotes by David Z https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/81190/whats-inside-a-proton?rq=1 A proton is really made of excitations in quantum fields (kind of like localized waves). If quarks are localized waves, then being indivisible is splitting a wave only to have the same thing you began with. It's like trying to cut the temperature in half by cutting the cake in half. And if we pull two quarks apart, a new pair pops into existence from the energy used to pull the quarks apart. FWD to 3:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls The whole video is good actually. Not really, look at the previous quote of what you said Yes, that's the one. So it was a silver atom. Well, again, the quantumness doesn't necessitate particleness; it only necessitates a discrete part of a continuum. I suppose we need to define "testable", but your philosophy appears to be that "testable" is independent from reason as if we can't obviously test the hypothesis of a true lie and determine it does not exist without resorting to empirical evidence. That's like saying "All statements must be backed by empirical evidence; except this one." Science grew out of philosophy like an apple grew from an apple tree. The top answer here saved me some typing https://www.quora.com/Is-philosophy-a-subset-or-superset-of-scientific-practice I think what you said is close to what I said, except that I wouldn't have said "that there IS something beyond" because we can't assume there is something beyond, but it is better to assume there is something beyond than to be sure that there is not. Do you see what I am trying to say? It is better to believe there is a god and to be wrong than to believe there isn't because our paradigm prevents transcendental thinking. I see what you're saying, but the problem isn't thinking outside the box or not knowing where the box is, but in not being able to admit error. "Oh well, it was an interesting idea, but back to the drawing board." That's the crackpot and they're really no different than anyone else because the ego is common to all and, coincidentally, it also has particle and wave-like properties in that it is indivisible and infinite in range How do you know a photon is not emitted gradually? Wouldn't instantaneous emission violate the "faster than light transmission of information" thing? The speed of causality? Unless, of course, by photon you mean the very start of a waveform, but even the beginning had a cause. How can there be discontinuities in the transfer of information? If there were, then the info would be lost. Good conversation, Strange. If guys named Strange are normal, then I'll have to watch out for guys named Norm

Probably why they say English is one of the hardest languages to learn and I'm not such a big fan of it because I find most arguments have semantics for fuel. Thanks for asking! I'm struggling with how to describe the amount of... I don't know what to call it... energy, heat, internal energy... in a co2 molecule due to the absorption of IR radiation and then compare that to the amount reflected in the visible band. I don't know how to do that because E=hf and therefore the amount reflected > the amount absorbed because E is purely a function of frequency. Another problem I have is how to differentiate the amount of IR re-radiation traveling towards earth vs the amount travelling to space. If we assume the re-radiation forms a cone of 90 degrees over the earth (which is the total possible paths a ray could take to strike a sphere), then it "seems" like energy should be divided by 4 (360/90 = 4), but it's not because E=hf. I am confused by the fact that heat is energy in transmission and not energy in storage, so the energy contained in a vibrating molecule is not heat, but the energy emitted is. So is the energy of the vibrating molecule called internal energy? Do I quarter the internal energy to find what I need? Or am I looking for heat? And in the case of the visible light reflection, am I looking for heat? I'm totally lost and I'm not even sure how to ask a question properly. I also need a diffusion index for co2 because I need to know how much light is reflected at each frequency. Oh goodness... I'm such a goofball! I thought you misspelled "phase" as "phrase" and upon being corrected, I then googled "phrase charge separation" like an idiot lol. I was thinking, "What the heck is 'phrase charge separation? Google has nothing about it." Then it occurred to me that you meant the phrase "charge separation." Next time use quotes when dealing with dummies I knew the meaning of "charge separation", but I did not know it was called that. Wiki says - Photoinduced charge separation is the process of an electron in an atom or molecule, being excited to a higher energy level by the absorption of a photon and then leaving the atom or molecule to a nearby electron acceptor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoinduced_charge_separation I have a question about the last statement on that page: If a photon of light hits the atom it will be absorbed if, and only if, energy of that photon is equal to the difference between the ground state and another energy level in that atom. This raises the electron to a higher energy level. Why is it not better to say that the difference between the ground state and another energy level is the point where a photon is absorbed? Why does the photon depend on the energy level and not the energy level depend on the photon? Do you see what I am asking? It seems like it would be the resonance of the atom that determines the point where a photon would be absorbed and that would define the difference in energy levels. Not the other way around, which is the difference in energy levels determines if a photon is absorbed and that defines the resonance because it doesn't make sense that way. It's putting the cart before the horse. Resonance is a function of mass and bond strength and resonance determines if a photon is absorbed and therefore is it resonance that determines the difference in energy levels. Why is that not correct? ______________________________________________________________ Damn merging! I hope Studiot notices that I addressed him. Can someone please give me a reason why anyone would desire to have their replies all merged together? I can't see how that is a handy feature and it's exceedingly frustrating to have what I wrote to Studiot to be merged with what I wrote to John.

Because I am not wrong and have supplied evidence illustrating that I am not. If you need more evidence, then I'd enthusiastically accept the invitation to vent frustration while simultaneously proving just how right I am if I could post here every time I find ambiguity while researching. Here is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavenumber#Definition That's a weak defense as astronomy depends on physics. You're probably right and that isn't something to be proud of. What's the difference between nature and reality?