Re: A thought experiment

doug <xx@xxxxxx> wrote:
Jonah Thomas wrote:
doug <xx@xxxxxx> wrote:
Jonah Thomas wrote:

To get a standing wave from traveling waves, theory appears to say
that you need two traveling wave moving in opposite directions. So
if the theory is right then you're dealing with something that's
inherently more complicated than a single traveling wave. If the
theory is not correct then you may be dealing with something quite
different.

Oh, come on. You keep showing your ignorance of science in the
last few centuries. Please look at an E&M textbook or even a
freshman physics text for this. The theory is fine.

How would you know?

Lets see, you have not studied any physics and yet you
think you know more than the accumulated knowledge of
a century of competent scientists?

No, and also I don't think you know nearly as much as the accumulated
knowledge of a century of competent scientists.

Once you assume that you know what kind of wave you have, you can
use standing waves to get specific information about it....

What do you mean "what kind of wave you have"?


Here's the way I see it, which could be wrong. Start with a
potential function (p,A). Take the four partial derivatives. The
three space derivatives are the electric and magnetic fields. Take
the sixteen second derivatives. Four of them give you a gauge. The
other twelve are partially resolved by Maxwell's equations. Aside
from terms of the gauge which can be cancelled out, Maxwell's
equations convert these twelve partial derivatives into J plus some
leftover terms. If ME had one sign different then the twelve vector
second derivatives would all boil down to 4pi*J. But it appears it
does not.

So this is why you wanted to change the laws of physics to
fit your prejudices.

Yes. I don't expect you to understand, but I'll describe it anyway. I
wanted to learn about light so I looked at Maxwell's equations and where
they came from. Two unexplained phenomena, electric charge and
magnetism. They turn out to be somehow related and deeply linked in
simple ways. They turn out to be related to light also. It's immediately
obvious that our beliefs about these three things depend heavily on our
history. If we had been living on a world with very little copper,
silver, gold, or iron would we have gotten interested in electric
currents or magnetism? It was having lots of magnets that got us
interested in magnetism at all. Our ideas of static electricity might
have gone in quite a different direction if it wasn't easy for us to
make electric circuits. Of course electricity travels well through salt
water solutions like people, but it's different making electric circuits
with thin tubes of salt water ... we probably wouldn't think as much as
we do in terms of linear flows.


It turns out that electric and magnetic fields integrate to a potential
function. Take the partial derivatives and electric and magnetic fields
are 3/4 of those derivatives. A simple obvious relationship between
them, so that now instead of two unknowns that are peculiarly linked we
have one unknown 4-potential. So of course I try to see how the
4-potential behaves, and Maxwell's equations put some constraints on it.
But they leave a great big degree of freedom. They aren't enough to tell
you what happens.

That tells me that either ME have a sign wrong, which would fix it. Or
there's a fifth Maxwell equation that Maxwell did not discover. Or the
4-potential has an extra degree of freedom and I can look at the
possibilities that allows. The third seems the most plausible, but I
might as well look into the others too.

Maxwell's equations aren't enough to determine things. There's more
going on even if they are correct as far as they go.

They don't tell you everything there is to know about light waves.
So it isn't enough to consult ME if you want to know about that.
They are at best incomplete.

If you would look at an E&M book, you would see how all this
is developed. If you know enough math, Jackson is the class
text. All your questions are answered there.

Does Jackson tell me about this? It would be really cool if so.

.

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