Speed of Light and Mirrors

Is this "ask illogical questions about light day"?

"allot going on at the moment the light (and everything in it) hits the mirror."

What exactly is in the light?

Have you tried Wiki?

can't you bounce sun light off of mirrors and absorb it into a pipe of water and make steam? But you can't just absorb it and make the steam. Some thing must happen to the light when it is reflected, at 187,999 miles / sec.

Yes

but nothing about speed of light/wave length.

seems that compression gets more blue, and hotter (able to make steam).

same as a good blue flame on a burner.

Either way, much more efficient. (hardly any moving parts)

According to Albert E., the light will leave at the same speed. Maybe some light will be converted onto heat. Solar sails count on the light being converted into thrust, I'm just not sure how.

I still like the part where the speed of light is held so sacred, but then there is 'Red Shift' and 'Blue Shift' to explain light from a moving emitter. Does 'Red' light have a different speed from 'Blue' light or 'regular' light? Good dodge.

What Usbport said, plus, think Doppler Effect.

And

Nice!

"light" is a common description for a frequency of oscillation of energy just as radio waves are at a lower frequency. The red shift and blue shift you are speaking of is doppler effect, which is used in radar extensively. You can hear the same effect if you listen to a train approaching, reaching your position, and then passing by. The sounds and whistle from the train will change pitch.

'Does 'Red' light have a different speed from 'Blue' light or 'regular' light?' NO! Red light and blue light have different wavelengths (red ~ 650 nm, blue ~ 450 nm) but they both travel at the speed of light. So do xrays, radio waves, etc. etc.

so the wave length of the sunlight bounced from an array of flat mirrors on to a pipe full of water ( AUSRA INC. ) must be very, very high at the point of attack ( a mirror ) so it can convert as much as it can to " heat " , and go back at a completely different wave length, thus turning water into 800 degree steam, and not "melting" the mirror..... (AUSRA INC.)

As a surfer, wave length is important, but it's all "bene tuto", and just an illusion of the moment.

flat plate collector vs. reflector / collector. Thread #9.

what is the wavelength (at close to the speed of light) at the flat plate, then what is the wave length at the "focus" point on the reflector collector? (AUSRA INC.)

The grid and power plants, should be augmented with these collectors (very user friendly)

the flat plate doesn't have a wavelength

actually none of your question makes any sense or even applies.

If you are into wave length and frequencies you know then that time not. What we experience is frequency variations making time a non issue.

Great post, but I'm a little dense. Maybe a drawing will give me the picture.

Another question I have is, does the photon have spin, and if so, which way? That is, would it spin like a bullet, or roll like a ball?

Would this spin account for the frequency mentioned? Guess not, because red or blue would be in the eye of the beholder, depending where he was located.

What I'm really getting at, is what makes the photon move? It leaves the emitter at full speed, goes just about forever,(or? how can it go forever? wouldn't that violate some rule of energy?) never slows down, and can slip past other photons going at another angle without any apparent reaction. Wow.

Is there any mechanical model of a photon?

Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone here....

Shine some collimated light perpendicularly on a mirror. Then slide into the path a second mirror, parallel to and reflecting to the first. Bingo--light storage?

how could you release the light and use it later? If it was sun light, what would happen to the heat? would the mirrors absorb it all?

Satire ≠ seriousness.

As a kid I remember going into those public restrooms with one giant mirror on one side of the room and one on the opposite side. Your reflection would bounce back and fourth into infinity. I always wondered at what point my reflection would stop, or if it did .

It's better with people.

except that are no perfect mirrors.

Nor people.

well

some people eventually see the light

others think Obama will make their world perfect (did I just say that?)

anyway, be careful holding that mirror

at 186,000 miles per second, that light hittin the mirror might knock you on your butt

Stub <<<<needs more coffee

If you assume a perfect mirror (Not too hard to come very, very close), the only thing that happens, in the frame of the mirror, is a reversal of the direction vector perpendicular to the mirror surface.

you assume that the flat mirror is perpendicular to the sun light. (Never in a steam solar collector) and the rate of change, changes, as the deflection changes.

In fact I think that this could be a legitimate question. A weep when changes the direction of its tip movement, produces a sound that is a sonic boom. The weep itself, when moved in one direction, has a speed not even close to the speed of sound (334m/s). When it reverses the movement, the tip has an inflection point where from a positive speed gets a negative one of the same magnitude. For that fraction of time, the weep tip speed is passing the speed of sound, producing the sonic boom.

I have learnt in school about the duality wave/corpuscle of the light. As an engineer I had to base all my activity on the accepted knowledge.

But now, I am practically retired (thank you - you know whom - for having improved the electronics engineering work conditions in all of the Asian continent) and allowed by Constitution to freely rethink some precepts.

Setting aside the scorn that I will get from some CR4rs, I am beginning to ask myself: what is that stuff about duality? relativistic mass for photons? sounds like holy trinity, unproven but accepted by many as real.

well then, let us get back to the point of attack. the "moment" the sunlight strikes the mirror and reverses (not parallel) . What would the temperature be of the mirror? , and the speed from the mirror carrying all of the heat.? Maybe at the point of attack there is no time, or all time, and just an illusion.

Interesting analogy - the whip effect could be transposed to the gamma ray bursts of a collapsing star - where gravity retains photons [due to the 'duality'] - so logically is faster than light - which kinda 'adjusts' the holy trinity?

I am not a physic major but far I know light is electro magnetic wave and this wave come as compact pocket as layman term. Wave pocket can be compressed and expanded in frequency as we use it.

When we compress electrical or magnetic wave it will not transform to other form energy based on how elastic the waves are.

With any energy there is component which is elastic and other is plastic. Plastic component is loss of that form of energy like conversion of light to heat. This happens all the time when we allow then light wave to get absorbed in water and use this phenomena to dry our cloth in sun. We also know light will heat up every thing on which it fall.

Even in light when hit mirror we have loss the loss is in two form one is conversion from one frequency to another when it end up reflecting from mirror and other part is absorbed as heat in the mirror.

The OP's question "what happens exactly at the moment you encounter a mirror and go back the other way"? begs another question: What exactly is reflection?

Does the self-same photon (1) bounce off of the mirror atom or does it (2) interact with, or absorbed by, the atom and a totally new photon package is ejected which is similar to the one that collided with the mirror?

If #1, then what is it bouncing off of?; does it squash like a ball then rebound? and send it off at a precise angle?

If #2, then what interactions occur to re-package the photon? and send it off at a precise angle?

This company is right down your alley. (AUSRA INC.) Reflecting photons and making steam is an ancient art-form.

What do you think the wave length is at the receiver?

Is it like the wave length of blue " perfect gas"? (home gas heating systems).

On a flat plate mirror, doesn't the photon have to travel through glass first then reflect? Is the wave length changed in both directions?

Depends if the mirror is surface silvered - like telescopes and most lab stuff - or back silvered like domestic and 'make up' ones.

Jus' sayin'

If you look carefully at the right angle you can see two reflections, one off glass/air boundary and one off the glass/metal boundary. ;-)

Very interesting maths at work to find the wavelengths at both right angles. I am interested in the Heat part of sunlight. The Photon . It also "bounces" off the mirror and is captured by the receiver. (Ausura Inc.) (simplest way to make steam) and efficiency is key. The thickness of the mirror and its make-up are part of the equation, but bottom line it is just a mirror. Some one said the flatter the mirror the better.

The black metal wrench is indeed not emitting much visible light. It is, as URAD Harvey said, emitting IR. It is not emitting as much total energy as it is receiving. IR is much lower energy than visible light, photon for photon. The energy not radiated as IR stays in the black metal wrench and is manifested in the faster moving molecules that make up the wrench. Some of this energy is conducted into the air moving over the surfaces of the wrench. It eventually reaches an equilibrium where the energy in (from visible light) is equal to the energy out (in IR radiation and conducted heat).

As chrome plating on a cast metal wrench is not a very efficient reflector, the chrome plated wrench will absorb some visible light but will reflect some as well. It will emit some as IR and will also heat up though not as much as the black metal wrench.

score a perfect ten for the answer

'But does the photon 'bounce' off the material? I don't think so. In my opinion the energy is absorbed and re-radiated and the characteristics of the material determine the bandwidth of visible (or invisible for that matter) light (or radio waves) is re-emitted.' I've never heard this before, and it is a very interesting idea. You may be right but do you have any sources for this?

The speed of light is affected by the medium it is transmitted through:

The speed at which light propagates through transparent materials, such as glass or air, is less than c. The ratio between c and the speed v at which light travels in a material is called the refractive index n of the material (n = c / v). For example, for visible light the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 ≈ 200,000 km/s; the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is very close to c.

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Speed_of_light