Re: Quick Speed of Light Question

From: GoldenBoar (no_at_email.com)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:01:20 GMT

On 27 Sep 2004 06:39:31 -0700, Paul Draper <pdraper@yahoo.com> wrote:

> GoldenBoar <no@email.com> wrote in message
> news:<opsewu7sz709ix88@mabsmain>...
>> On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 17:49:52 GMT, GoldenBoar <no@email.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:24:19 GMT, GoldenBoar <no@email.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> If the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s exactly, what
>> is
>> >> the
>> >> speed of light in space and what factors are involved in its
>> >> calculation?
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >
>> > This was supposed to be a quick and easy question, but either the
>> > question is too dificult or you guys think it stupid. For those in the
>> > latter category, space is not a vacuum remember. A vacuum should have
>> a
>> > temperature of 0 K, space has a temperature of 2.7 K.
>> >
>> > So i guess what I am really asking is the difference in speed caused
>> by
>> > a temperature of 2.7 K.
>> >
>> > After searching the internet unsuccesfully for an answer, this speed
>> was
>> > referred to as both the speed of light in a vacuum and in space.
>> >
>> > Is this a measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum, or the speed
>> of
>> > light in space?
>> >
>> > Could someone please answer this question, which I thought would be
>> easy
>> > for you guys.
>>
>> For anyone wondering about this, I found an equation on Wikipedia:
>>
>> E=kT
>>
>> where E is the Energy
>> k is the Boltzmann Constant
>> and T is the Temperature
>>
>> From this, you can see that if T=0 then E=0. This tells us that the
>> speed
>> of light in a vacuum is not 299,792,458 m/s, but is in fact 0, meaning
>> light cannot travel in a vacuum.
>>
>> If light cannot travel in a vacuum, why does the universe exist?
>>
>> If c is actually 0 in a vacuum, then the other vacuum properties are
>> also
>> 0.
>>
>> What is going on here? Is the above equation wrong? Are the equations
>> relating Planck's constant, frequency, wavelength, and the speed of
>> light
>> wrong?
>>
>> Thanks for all your responses, they were so helpful to me.
>
> Oh my, now I think I see why you got so many responses. Be very, very
> careful with equations. Physics formulas are an extreme version of
> shorthand, designed to provide mathematical rigor but leaving out
> virtually all of the physical meaning, which is assumed to be in the
> head of the reader. In this case, the assumption is poor.
>
> You show E=kT, and I call and raise with E=pc, E=(1/2)mv^2, E = T+V, E
> = (1/2)kA^2, E=hf, and E=mc^2. Unless you can understand and
> distinguish between the context of what E means in each of these
> cases, you have no business pulling meaning out of a Wikipedia fomula.
>
> PD

My original question is still unanswered.

Imagine a boy in school who asks the teacher a question. The teacher
completely ignores the boy. The next day, the boy asks the teacher the
same question, and once again is ignored. On the third day, the boy goes
to the library to try and find an answer to the question. He then asks the
teacher the question again, and explains that he found an answer in the
library, but believes it to be wrong, and asks the teacher why this is so.
The tacher replies, "You have no business being in a library!"

What does this say about the teacher?
What does this say about the child?

2 words come to mind immediately, ignorance and arrogance.