studiot

I don't know if FW's hypothesis is the same or not, but I thought you might be interested in comparable ideas. The main thing about FW's 'medium' is that it is not incompatible with modern measurements. He does discuss similarities and differences with aether theories. Personally I find the qeust for grand unified theories boring. If it it ends up showing there is only one agent at work in the whole universe then there is only one thing left for that agent to interact with - itself. I much prefer the universe of a multiplicity of agents and a myriad of interactions.

screwstrip Alright, sorry. If one were to assume that space was filled with a medium and that medium could explain all natural phenomena what would the properties be of that medium and how would it operate? Well this certainly belongs in speculations. However that is not bad and indeed, properly handled, it could become an exemplary speculations thread. Sounds to me like to are describing Frank Wilczek's hypothesis. Have you heard of him, he was the 2004 Nobel winner in Physics? I recommend his book, The Lightness of Being to you for comparison

You are more likely to engage responders here if you read and conformed to the rules for posting here. Can you rephrase your question so that I don't have to go off pitch to find out what it is please?

If you really want witchcraft and alchemy, how about this: There is a non zero, although vanishingly small, probability that the tea will quantum tunnel through the cup wall and keep going. However I would point out that every time I go scuba diving I bet my life on the quantum probability that the air in my tank will not quantum tunnel out of my air tank. I also rely on my dive computer, which uses quantum tunneling to operate in the sub atomic realm, not to run out of air in the conventional manner.

If you stop the cup moving forwards how can the tea continue moving, except upwards? The tea is tightly packed into the cup. Would a tightly packed solid do the same?

Nice overview +1

Thank you for this information since the proposed new EDF plant will be in my backyard if built. Edit There is more to be said in general. The incident was apparently in 2014, but more data is coming to light now. http://www.dw.com/en/reports-fessenheim-nuclear-accident-played-down-by-authorities/a-19093477

Quite likely, since at least one purpose of using LED lighting is to use less electricity. Power that is not drawn from the mains does not go anywhere, any more than power that is not drawn from an unused socket (wall outlet) goes anywhere. Engineering is quite contrary to politics where they pay farmers to not grow turnips under a scheme called setaside. Be glad of this because think how much your electricity company could charge if it could charge for power not drawn. That is done to some extent where the capacitive power factor of street lights is offset against the inductive pf of consumers. However if your installation has a power factor of say 0.8, then as I already described, the power company's supply has to have a large capacity to supply you with say 25 kilowatts than it would if your power factor was 1.0, like say your neighbour enjoys. Say you and a friend went to the ice cream van and each bought an ice cream, but you bought a double and he bought a single cone. Would your friend be happy if the vendor said I'll average it and charge you both for 1.5 cones?

You do not need electromagnetism, witchcraft or alchemy to explain this. Tea, in a cup, is a liquid and liquids possess a property not available to any appreciable extent to solids. A liquid converts a force exerted on it by its container into internal pressure within the liquid. Take a tube of toothpaste or ketchup, point it upwards and squeeze it. The force of your fingers is converted to increase pressure within the tube and this causes the liquid paste or ketchup to rise vertically. In your teacup, when you stop the front side of the cup exerts a horizontal force on the liquid nearest to it. This increase the pressure in that part of the tea. The increased pressure causes the tea to rise in that part of the cup and slop over the edge. You can create more complicated explanations involving momentum, but the explanation is still mechanical in nature.

We discussed light sources in general and LEDs in particular a few years back, and I reported results of my trials of some LED lights. Here is more gneral information http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/67711-led-and-other-light-sources/ Here is a long thread pages3 and 4 are the most relevant. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/67073-cfls-not-a-bright-idea/page-3

I know it is difficult to use popular language and be precise at the same time, It is all too easy to say or imply something untrue,so you have to be very careful to avoid this. All harmonics are sinusoidal waves. Power factor is just as important with a single frequency pure sine wave as with a distorted one. It is not the distortion that lowers the power factor, it is the reactive components in the load. With a purely resistive load the power factor would remain at 1, whatever the waveshape.

So often Wiki get too esoteric about a subject and does not offer a simple introduction/explanantion. So here is my rough guide to power factor. I would suggest that looking at power factor correction would suit you better. https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=power+factor+correction&gbv=2&oq=power+factor&gs_l=heirloom-hp.1.1.0i131l2j0l8.1141.3516.0.10344.12.8.0.4.4.0.125.969.0j8.8.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.12.1127.fuIIDDE7fDM Things to note. In DC electricity power equals the voltage x the current in all cases. In AC electricity there may be a mismatch of timing between the current and voltage which means that the power you can extract from the supply is less than the product of voltage and current. Thus in order to obtain a specific power, eg 1 kilowatt, you have to live with a higher value of voltage x current. Since the mains voltage is fixed this means a higher current. Thus the cabling has to be sized for this larger current. The greater the mismatch the greater the cable size. This is the reason for the extra copper. Power factor is a measure of this mismatch. The ideal value is 1. Power factor depends on the device connected, not on the supply. There are two types of power factor, positive and negative. This arises because there are two additional types of device in AC electricity over DC. These are called capacitive and inductive devices and create power factors of opposite sign. The main capacitive types are flourescent and more modern lights. the main inductive types are electric motors. Industrially their two power factors can be used to cancel each other out, makeing the overall power factor closer to 1. This is known as power factor improvement and many suppliers charge a premium the further your power factor is from 1. I would say the two greatest faults with LED lighting installations ar. 1) They still generate much heat and insufficient provosion for dissipating this has lead to fires. 2) They have a very different light distrbution pattern, particularly compared to flourescent. They are a very concentrated, intense source. as such they are unsuitable for recessed fittings, often favoured for flourescents. Many LED installations retro-fitted to recessed ceilings have proved a great disappointment as much of the light never leaves the recess and the lighting appears dim.

The terms are too general to offer meaning to, but please let us know if you find out anything useful.

If that was my thermometer it would actually tell me it has been stuck since last summer (??) !

Entropy part 1 Entropy, like energy, is a derived quantity, not directly measurable. Today we have two quite different approaches entropy. It was one of the great triumphs of 19th century science to show these different approaches to be concerned with the same physical property, albeit from different viewpoints. Confusion often arises if and when inappropriate parts of one view are mixed with the other. Historically entropy was first introduced by the technologists and scientists interested in heat engines, particularly steam engines. These workers were concerned with plain down-to-earth matters that have real substance in out physical world that they could measure – We now call these observables. The second approach was abstract and theoretical and founded in the Kinetic Theory. Boltzman’s equation Entropy, S = k loge (W) is one of the great fundamental equations of Physics that has been expanded beyond energetics and thermodynamics to other fields such as information theory. This treatment is largely qualitative, for understanding, rather than quantitative for carrying out calculations. But it does involve some maths and underlying Physics. You should ask if I introduce anything you have not met before. To start with something familiar we have to go back to the time of Hooke and Newton and consider stretching and cooling as in the two diagrams Fig1 and Fig2 which have given rise to two modern day experiments for A level students. A great deal of Physics can be learned from both these two experiments that is not always put forward by the texts. They did not have a fully formed concept of energy, let alone entropy, in those days but they gave us the beginnings of modern mechanics (Hooke’s Law) and Thermodynamics (Newton’s Law of Cooling). In Hooke’s experiment we have two observables, the load or applied force and the extension. We can plot a force/extension graph and use it to find the energy input (= work done) as the area under the graph. Instead of getting hung up on the graph being a straight line two things to take from this 1) The use of observables to calculate a desired derived quantity. 2) The desired quantity (energy) is simply the area under the graph. This was the world’s first use of such a diagram . I will return to Fig2 later, but what do you think the observables are? Fast forward through the next hundred years or so, to the time of James Watt, during which Joule and Count Rumford put energy on a firm basis. In particular they showed that heat is a form of energy, a property of matter, not a special fluid that we add matter or take away from it. James Watt was concerned with steam engines and his directly observables were pressure, volume, temperature and mass. He was the first person to emulate Fig1 by drawing a pressure-volume graph and realising that the area under this graph also represents energy or work, as in Fig3. Clever mechanics soon created a mechanism to draw these PV diagrams, directly from the pressure gauges or indicators of the time. Such diagrams became known as ‘indicator diagrams’. Now this was all very well for pressure and volume, but what about temperature? So let us start by looking at Fig2 more closely. Newton’s cooling experiment (usually conducted with naphthalene today) is a temperature-time graph. It has three portions. Two decelerating curves where the temperature is falling according to Newton’s Law of Cooling. But in between these is a flat, horizontal, section during which the temperature does not fall at all. Yet heat is being lost all the time. This is our first inkling of entropy, and our first connection to the kinetic theory. Fast forward another hundred years whilst thermodynamics develops and the steam engineers want to link the other observable, temperature, to the energy input or outputs. So they look for a simple property that can be paired with temperature to produce a graph where the energy is the area under the graph, like the indicator diagrams of Hooke and Watt. Clausius came up with ‘entropy’ and it was given the symbol S. Entropy is nothing more than the property on one axis of an indicator diagram that yields energy as the area under the graph. They called this a T-S indicator diagram. Fig 4 Note that in order to create an indicator diagram using temperature as one variable they had to give up using only observables, but they set about producing tables of entropy for all conceivable situations and engineers of today use these to look up the entropy. So there you have it Energy = entropy times temperature Or Entropy = energy divided by temperature So it is measured in energy per degree (Kelvin). But in that century of development there were some twists. Many types of energy were identified. For entropy it is not any old energy but specifically heat energy. Mechanical energy is not included. So all the force times extension work under the Hooke graph in Fig1 is not included. In Fig 2 I have marked two points, A and B. Heat is being evolved but the temperature is not changing. The entropy change = Area under the TS diagram in Fig4 and I have marked A and B here as well. Today we have also identified many other pairs of variables that can be combined to form indicator diagrams. Once such pairing is surface energy and surface area, which is what started this thread. There are plenty of points to expand on here so I think that is enough for part 1.

Perhaps you don't understand plain English. You clearly misinterpreted what I said because at no point in my life have I ever claimed that a free electron is an orbital, or even connected to one, even when I was at school. I actually asked a question because you claimed congruence between electrons and orbitals and I asked question 3 because I wanted you to demonstate this claimed congruence for a free electron. You cannot have it both ways. Either an electron is an orbital or it is not. Which are you claiming? You have been very fond of telling me that I'm wrong on this forum, yet I did not initially flatly contradict you. Rather I offered you the opportunity to think again by expressing doubts and requesting more details, indicating the areas of my doubts. Your response was a direct personal attack, which has continued in that vein since.

A lump on one side of the washing machine huh? There is one place in a washing machine the washing stays away from. The axis of rotation. This represents a fundamental difference from the Earth's continents. Pangea was not the first super continent, nor is it likely to be the last. But look at today's globe. The continents are lumped together, not equatorially or on one side of a spinning globe, but spread around the axis concentrated close to the poles. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7384/abs/nature10800.html

OK I will start the ball rolling. First the word abscissa refers to plots of specific points on 2D planar graph paper. It is the coordinate relative one of the two sets of gridlines, by convention the horizontal gridlines on the graph paper. The other coordinates are called ordinates. By convention these are relative to the vertical gridlines on the graph paper. Now for the 'curvature' of spacetime. This depends upon your point of view. Here is an analogy, due to John Baez, a noted californian physicist. Two men stand at the equator and look directly at each other. They both mark off a right angle from the equator towards the North and start walking, both keeping straight on due North. That is as far as each can tell they are each walking in a straight line and they check this by checking the perpendicularity as they cross each parallel of latitude. As they approach the pole they realise that they are coming closer and closer together, although both are walking along a gridline perpendicular to their startline. So what is happening? Explanation 1) There is a mutual attraction, a sort of personal gravitational force drawing them together. Explanation 2) They are somehow not wallking in a straight line but a curved one. Now this example is not yet into spacetime, it is simply 3D space. But it is sufficient to explain quite a few things. The men are confined to a 2D world, the surface of the Earth. We call this a manifold. The manifold is simply all the places (points) accessible or available to the men. From the point of view of an outsider the surface (manifold) is curved in 3D so the gridlines of longitude converge. Further they are not straight but curved. So the outsider goes for explanation 2 From the point of view of the men, who cannot (let us say for the purpose of this exercise) see 3D, they cannot see this curvature So the men feel justified in going for explanation 1. There we have two explanations, a curved manifold or gravity in our model. But there is a further twist. The men have a choice. They could carry on with their coordinate system of lines of latitude and longitude, completely within the manifold. Or they could postulate the existence of curvature in a third dimension and draw up an X, Y, Z coordinate system. Then their paths become space curves (arc of circles) and they could call them geodesics. Projecting this forward to 4D spacetime we can do the same thing.

Everyone deserves the right of reply. But not to call the other persons statement nonsense. Particularly when you specifically said "The orbital IS the waveform of the electron", emphasising the word 'is'. Now some electrons are free. So I asked you to describe the obital that is the electron, in this condition.

An empty orbital has more in common with an empty bookshelf. Whilst the book is on the shelf it is on a ledge in a potential energy field. If I remove the book does the shelf disappear? But as swansont has pointed out there is more to quantum orbitals than just energy levels so they are more complicated than bookshelves.

DrP, you should not imagine the comparison with your guitar string. Orbitals as solutions to the Schrodinger equation only bears a passing resemblence to the solution to classical wave equation which your cuitar string obeys. If you twang the string you can see a shape in space describing the vibrations. If you are inhumanly very very quick you can catch the string at the top of its vibration between your fingers. At this time ther is no possibility that the string will elude your grasp simply because it is at the opposite side of its vibration. That is what you see is a time averaged blur comprising mostly empty space. The orbital is not like that. Wherever you 'grab' it you will have some interaction with any electron in that orbital, as any atom approaching to bond will experience. The electron is not on one side of the vibration at one time and on the other side at another as the string is.

Wow, that is rather peremptory. Did I offend you? To answer your comments in reverse order 4) So you are saying that if I remove 1 electron from the 1s orbital of Helium, the orbital I took it from collapses? So what happens to the other electron in the 1s orbital? 3) So is this a claim that a 'free, unbound' electron no longer obeys quantum mechanics in general and the wave equation in particular? 2) So how do you explain bonding orbitals and anti-bonding orbitals? 1) So what? well this is tied in with question 4, already answered.

Not convinced. 1) An orbital can contain more than one electron, 2) What are you suggesting empty orbitals to be? 3) Please describe the 'orbital' of a free electron. 4) If an electron becomes free, ie leaves an orbital, what is left behind? Does the electron leave part of itself behind?

The whole point of this thread appears to be that you wish to demonstrate the truth of its title. Unfortunately the title is imprecise since it employs imprecise words such as reality and existence. Existence in particular has a specific meaning in mathematics, which does not directly correlate with our ideas of reality, physical or otherwise. But you also asked a specific question of a mathematical nature, which seemed to me to question whether infinity could be handled mathematically and I gave a specific answer. My answer, as does your reply quoted above, showed that it most definitely can. So if you want to you can handle very large numbers or infinity mathematically. We are agreed.

If a number is large but not transfinite it will follow the rules for finite numbers, however big it might be. So , for instance, given any integer, however large, I can easily make an even number from it (guaranteed). If the number is transfinite then you can follow one of the schemes of rules for the manipulation of such numbers. There is more than one available and they are all different from the schemes for the manipulation of finite numbers.