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Sapper · 05-07-2004, 08:17 PM

Your premise would be true in what I like to call "physics land" where you can define "annoying variables".

If there were a perfect vacuum and the reflective surfaces were 100% efficient, then your premise is correct - except for the "magnification" part. I'll briefly explain the magnification: this notion is derived from classic geometrical optics where you can use refraction to increase or decrease the size of an image that a lens subtends. This means using the fact that light traveling through media of different refractive indicies (things in which light travels at different speeds), you can cause the rays to "bend" and thus an object appears larger.

As noted, no reflective surface is even near 100% This goes as far as atomic structure - as a photon hits the reflective surface, some of the energy is lost in the collision with an atomic body (electron, nucleus) and according to the law of conservation of energy, some energy is lost from the photon. This means that as the photon is reflected from the atom, it has lost some of its energy. Loss of energy continues to infinity whereby all energy is converted from light to heat.

Cool.

It is possible to surmise that if you were to shine blue light into your theoretical apparatus, with an efficiency of "x" you would be able to watch the light turn from blue to red and onward to the lower frequencies. Observing the light of course would introduce an exponential decay in efficiency.

Wow - come to think of it .. this sounds a lot like Schrodinger's cat.

Oh god, I think I've gone cross-eyed.

05-07-2004, 08:17 PM	#6 (permalink)
Sapper Insane Location: The Internet	Your premise would be true in what I like to call "physics land" where you can define "annoying variables". If there were a perfect vacuum and the reflective surfaces were 100% efficient, then your premise is correct - except for the "magnification" part. I'll briefly explain the magnification: this notion is derived from classic geometrical optics where you can use refraction to increase or decrease the size of an image that a lens subtends. This means using the fact that light traveling through media of different refractive indicies (things in which light travels at different speeds), you can cause the rays to "bend" and thus an object appears larger. As noted, no reflective surface is even near 100% This goes as far as atomic structure - as a photon hits the reflective surface, some of the energy is lost in the collision with an atomic body (electron, nucleus) and according to the law of conservation of energy, some energy is lost from the photon. This means that as the photon is reflected from the atom, it has lost some of its energy. Loss of energy continues to infinity whereby all energy is converted from light to heat. Cool. It is possible to surmise that if you were to shine blue light into your theoretical apparatus, with an efficiency of "x" you would be able to watch the light turn from blue to red and onward to the lower frequencies. Observing the light of course would introduce an exponential decay in efficiency. Wow - come to think of it .. this sounds a lot like Schrodinger's cat. Oh god, I think I've gone cross-eyed. __________________ rm -f /bin/laden Last edited by Sapper; 05-07-2004 at 08:21 PM..