That is what they told you in school. They told me among other things
that pineapples grow on trees. This fellow Cicerone, that is about 100
AD, said " Do not swear on your teacher's word." I will always believe
behaviour of things like light in the prism before I start believing to
people. I had people to tell me stories, I had a dog who managed to lie
to me, but I have never run into a "inert" behaviour to mislead me.
(Even though I misslead myself quite a few times)
To Warren,
I was told at a time that the Quantum Mechanics is more or less based on
the Kinetic Theory of Gas. I never tried to understand QM from the
simple reason that I am not all that excited about math. If the QM is
based on the Kinetic though, then I think I can pull the chair from
under the QM.
Kinetic claims that the rate of molecular motion in gasses, liquids and
even solids equals their temperature. Ever seen the pictures in the
physics text books? Lets look at that. Its classic.
Take a dish and stick a candle in it. Put some water into dish and lit
the candle. Cover the candle with a glass. The air burns out, the candle
dies out. The water level under the glass raised.
Now let's do some math. For every diatomic molecule of oxygen into the
burning, we get out either one triatomic molecule of CO2, or two
triatomic molecules of H2O, or two diatomic molecules of CO.
So, while the number of molecules increased, while the quantity of
gaseous atoms increased and while the temperature increased, the
pressure went down. As far as I am concerned, the heat output decreased
the size of the molecules.
When you take into the account 80% heated nitrogen under the glass, the
evidence is overwhelming.
I do not care for ideal gasses. I am concerned with the real stuff.
Now lets get back to light. How does the Kinetic or QM explain
refraction of light in gasses? (Red dawn and dusk)
I cannot see that scattering of light off air molecules can refract
light toward earth. It cannot refract at all, because if it did, the
mean speed of light in air would have to be much less than C and a laser
would not work.
I do not say that math of Kinetic or QM is necessarily wrong. Most of it
is probably correct and some of it very much so. What I say is that the
interpretation of that math is no good, and that the math may be flawed.
Regards Slavek.