Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel_
Latices that trap photons are like this - the photons move at C, but because they bounce back and forth past atoms in the lattice, their path length is massively increased, and so they take longer to get through the lattice than L/C, where L is the external size of the lattice.
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Ahh, is this a property of all matter or only certain types? If the latter, what is different about it to cause this kind of behavior? Is this the entire reason for varying permittivity and permeability of different media? Is there any sort of delay associated with bouncing off an atom or is it simply because of the additional distance? This is where my knowledge starts to get really hazy, I am horrible at microelectronics and microphysics, why I ended up as a computer scientist than a EE, EE is practically turning into material physics and quantum mechanics these days as circuits shrink and shrink.
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Last edited by n0nsensical; 07-01-2009 at 11:33 PM..
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