Intel's Ronler Acres Plant

Silicon Forest
If the type is too small, Ctrl+ is your friend

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Bored

Week before last I went to three or four meetings/events and they were very interesting. I also walked about 15 miles and my foot started hurting, so last week I took it easy and didn't go anywhere, so I am a little bored.

I also spent some time with my daughter this week. She is my acting personal coach, wants me to get a job. I would like a job, but the job market doesn't look promising. So we were talking and I blurted out something about going back to school. I mean if I am not getting paid, I may as well do something I am interested in, and quantum physics may be just the ticket.

I don't believe in "dark matter" or gravitons or the Higgs boson or string theory or the multi-verse. If anyone comes up with any experimental evidence I will have to re-evaluate my position. There's plenty of physics to keep one occupied without going off into never-never land.

Meanwhile I am thinking about electromagnetic radiation (radio, heat, light, gamma rays, etc.) and it occurs to me that room temperature materials may be giving off radio waves. Or maybe it's only really cold materials that do that, or something weird, like radio transmitters. Something does not quite jibe here.

I am also looking for a chart that relates emitted light frequency to electron energy level changes of atoms. White light is made of all frequencies, but light comes in quanta and each quanta has a specific frequency, so there must be a whole bunch of excitation level changes that produce different frequencies. Surely someone has mapped this all out. Or maybe not.

No comments: