HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: What are those things called...
Date: 24 Jul 92 19:33:02 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
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In article <1992Jul24.134854.9052@lut.ac.uk>, A.J.Robinson@lut.ac.uk writes...
>In article <1992Jul23.214214.8574@microplex.com> hsk@microplex.com (Harjeet Kalsi) writes:
>>
>>I know I've seen them in physics labs (including mine when I was in school) 
>>but forgotten what this "box" with two antennas, that has a high
>>voltage spark travelling between the antennas from bottom to top,
>>is called.
>>
> 
>I think they're called Jacob's ladders, but I could be wrong.

Correct.  I don't know if they serve any useful function, but the easiest way
to make one is to take a pair of hack-saw blades and attach them to a HV
AC source (I think I used a 5 kV source when I built one years ago) like a 
pair of TV rabbit ears, teeth facing teeth.  A spark channel forms across a
couple of the lowest teeth of the blades and heats the air in and around the
channel, which causes it to rise up the blades until it runs off the upper tips
of the blades or some kind of plasma instability disrupts the channel.  At that
point a new channel forms near the bottom of the blades where they are closest
together. 

It produces a heck of a lot of ozone - not too good for your health. The
blades get very hot - be careful.  And you should probably make sure that
you aren't going to blow up your supply if it shorts metal-to-metal.  This
is not a trick to try with any semiconducting electronics around which can 
fry.  

-Scott

--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
From: mcirvin@husc10.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Solar Events and Earthquakes
Date: 22 Jul 92 00:09:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc10.mcirvin.711763773

gtsrcls@strosa.unocal.com (Charles Stuart) writes:

>>>>>> On 9 Jul 1992 20:14:43 -0700, srobiner@pollux.usc.edu (Steve Robiner) said:
>Steve> Has anyone ever studied solar activity in relation to Earthquake
>Steve> events?
>		Ron and Nancy Reagan seem preoccupied with armagedon.  Perhaps
>		their astrologer has dabbled in solar vs. seismicity  
>		"relationships".  But I'd call Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts to
>		verify this.......

Wasn't some kind of link between solar activity and earthquakes part
of John Gribbin's goofy "Jupiter Effect" predictions, that the gathering
of planets on one side of the solar system in 1982 would cause massive
seismic disaster?  When he recanted in 1980, the reason he gave was
that the sunspot maximum was coming earlier than he expected.  People
wonder why I'm leery of this guy's writings on quantum mechanics.

-- 
Matt McIrvin, grad student, Dept. of Physics, Harvard University
mcirvin@husc.harvard.edu      mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Need E-Mail address of Society of Physics Students 
From: wallin@hep4.physics.arizona.edu (Tripp Wallin)
Date: 21 Jul 92 11:34:35 MST
Distribution: world,local
Keywords: E-Mail

I need the E-Mail address of the National Office of the Society of Physics Students so I can
send a correction to them before they go into printing on their 1992-1993 Information Book.
If someone has the E-Mail address of the American Physical Society that would help also.

Thanks....

Tripp Wallin
Physics and Math Undergraduate
wallin@hep4.physics.arizona.edu


Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Defining Photons
Keywords: Relating photons E=MC^2 criticism
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 14:00:08 GMT

In article <27JUL199219012221@zeus.tamu.edu> dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE) writes:

>So now I think the thing which makes the photon classically 'different' from
>other particles is that it's a neutral boson. Like helium. Hmmm... 

I guess another thing that makes photons weird compared to, say, atoms
is that there is not even approximate conservation of photon number in
most situations.  That's why there's no exact analog of Bose
condensation for photons.  (Lasers are not examples of Bose condensation
because laser light is not an equilibrium state the way, say, superfluid
helium is.  The equilibrium state of photons is blackbody radiation and
this never exhibits Bose condensation.)
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: "What's New" July-24-1992
Date: 29 Jul 92 15:39:33 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <1992Jul28.235639.2933@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>     Why is the APS vehemently against SSF?  If we ignore possible
>     selfish funding considerations, the stated objection is that
>     it 'is not science'.  Well, there will certainly be science
>     done on the space station.  So the objection boils down to
>     'it is too much money for so little science'.

It is not just the APS that opposes the current version of the space station. 
Opposition comes from scientists involved in the space program (mainly those 
involved in interplanetary exploration) and from those in other countries 
as well.  The APS is hardly out there alone with some sort of vendetta, as 
many have tried to cast this debate. 

The problem is the way NASA is trying to sell this thing.  A good example is 
the story on CBS news last night, where the SSC and the space station are 
lumped together in a story about expensive science.  Somewhere it got said 
that the space station is to be used to explore the universe, but the big 
pitch is that it is for "science".  In particular, the media cast them both 
as fighting for the same limited pot of funds.  (I find it interesting that 
the latest move in Congress would shift funds from the space station to NIH.)

What I enjoyed, so to speak, was the juxtaposition of film of the SSC site 
(with that lovely elliptical shaft) with the mockups of "Freedom".  One 
might get the impression that NASA had a station ready to put in orbit 
and just needed the cash to put it up there, whereas it is not clear to 
me that the quoted price even includes the price of launching it.  (Does 
it?  Is the 30 G$ price tag based on the same analysis as the SSC estimate?)  
Personally, my suspicions were raised when the thing got named "Freedom" 
in the first place, but I guess you have to follow the trend set by "Mir".

I would much prefer a SpaceLab-II with a sustainable mission. 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Structure of Time (SUMMARY)
Followup-To: sci.physics
Date: 23 Jul 92 19:14:05 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
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In article <499@alden.UUCP>, sgr@ae-sun05 (Stan Ryckman) writes...
> 
>If _anything_ has a color, it does one or more of:
>   a) emit optical photons;
>   b) reflect optical photons;
>   c) absorb optical photons; or
>   d) refract optical photons.
> 
>No neutrino ever has been hypothesized by any physicist to interact
>with photons in any such way.  If so, they'd be easy to detect.

Whoa!  Neutrinos most definitely can interact with photons of any
wavelength.  After all, neutrinos have a magnetic moment (very small,
not yet measured, upper limits only known so far) in the Standard
Model.  Think of it this way - every neutrino spends part of its life
looking alot like a W-lepton pair. 

And photons get involved in weak interactions through trilinear and 
quadrilinear boson verticies, so even in first order some unfamiliar
processes can lead to neutrino-photon interactions.  For example,
neutrino + photon -> lepton + W* + photon -> lepton + W.

The problem with detecting this process and many more is an experimental 
one,  not a problem in principle due to absence of the interaction.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: zane@ddsw1.mcs.com (Sameer Parekh)
Subject: Re: Noah's formation: The rainbow
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Chicago, IL
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 08:13:53 GMT
X-Disclaimer:  Material posted in this article is the sole responsibility of
                the poster and does not represent MCSNet or the system owners.

In article <1992Jul20.224509.15546@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu (John Snyder) writes:
>
>So, in simple form, what is the correct explanation (including the double
>and triple rainbows)?
>
>John
>snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu
>
>
>
	Hard to explain without graphics.. Light enters the raindrop. The
raindrop is a sphere.  At the point where the light enters the raindrop from
the air, some of the light is reflected.  The reflected light has a phase
change.  The light which continues into the raindrop leaves the raindrop
into the air. At THAT point, some light is reflected. There is no phase
change.
	(I could've gotten my phase changes mixed up.)

	NOW. You have two rays of light leaving the raindrop in the same
direction-- one with a phase change of 1/2 lamda (wavelength) and the other
with a phase change of 2nd (because the travels further-- NOT REALLY a phase
change, but let's call it that..) (n is the refraction coeffiction for the
water, and d is the distance through the drop that the ray traveled before
being reflected.)
	So there is an intereference pattern, and a few wavelengths produce
maxima i.e. they are the brightest ones. Usually only one of these
wavelengths are visible.  Then you sum up all the rays going into the drop.
THe spherical nature of the drop accounts for differing 'd' values, and thus
light that enters the raindrop at different places have different maxima
colors.  THe spherical nature of the raindrop also refracts the light into
the arch.
	I am GUESSING that the second and third arches are due to more than
one visible maximum? That's a guess.
-- 
  _Sameer_Parekh_zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM_zane@infopls.chi.il.us__________________
 / STOP The War on Rights          | | Restore liberty in the United States \
 | "Specialization is for Insects" | | Vote Libertarian 1992          ______/
 \________- Robert A. Heinlein_____/ \_ap.2363@cupid.sai.com (anon)__/
From: steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Defining Photons
Date: 29 Jul 92 22:53:44 GMT
Organization: Lick Observatory/UCO
NNTP-Posting-Host: topaz.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: ethan@ut-emx.uucp's message of 29 Jul 92 14:28:29 GMT

In article <76737@ut-emx.uucp> ethan@ut-emx.uucp (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac) writes:


   these complications have well understood solutions. It is 
   unfortunate if using the word particle causes some nonphysicists
   to assume that mass is involved, but inventing a new word would
   lead to greater confusion.

Yes, but neologisms are such fun! 
Not only that, but a careful choice of metaphor
can lead to decade long confusion in the popular culture
about relationships between science and random metaphysical
inanities, providing for endless hours of fascinating cocktail
party conversations visavis the relationship between theoretical
physics and suitably obscure theologies...

   It is remarkable to me what some people imagine are issues in physics.

Seems to be a communication problem somewhere...

*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			 Lick Observatory     	  *
* steinly@helios.ucsc.edu		"standard disclaimer"  	  *
* But, oh, love is strange 					  *
* and you have to learn to take the crunchy with the smooth,      *
* I suppose 				              - B.B. 1983 *
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: cradle@wam.umd.edu (Dave Eisner)
Subject: Bubbles
Summary: books 
Originator: cradle@rac2.wam.umd.edu
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 01:35:38 GMT

This is in response to the request for information about (soap) bubbles.

An excellent book on the subject is
    The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles
      	by Cyril Isenberg.
    Published by Tieto Ltd., 5, Elton Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7RA, England.
    Printed in England by Woodspring Press Ltd., Church Street, Bridgewater,
    	Somerset.

I got this book from a teacher back in high school, and I'm not sure where
he obtained it.

It is a fairly in depth treatment of the subject.  It treats the chemical and
physical aspects of soap films and bubbles, including their use in finding
minimum surfaces with a particular boundary.

The Chapters are:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
DRAINING AND THINNING OF SOAP FILMS
THE MOTORWAY PROBLEM
MINIMUM SURFACES IN THREE DIMENSIONS
THE LAPLACE-YOUNG EQUATION
ANALYTIC METHODS AND RESULTS, VIBRATIONAL MODES, AND FURTHER ANALOG METHODS

Hope that helps.


					--Dave Eisner
					  cradle@wam.umd.edu
----------------------------------------
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Blue Sky
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:07:47 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
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In article <Jul.27.14.46.15.1992.6472@ruhets.rutgers.edu>, bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes...

>Incidentally, I believe that da Vinci understood that blue light
>was scattered preferentially, causing the blue sky, but didn't know
>why.  (He certainly didn't derive a k^4 dependence).  I don't think
>one can claim that his argument is based on "classical physics" in
>the usual sense.
> 

Actually, you remind me of what I think is a simple classical explanation
for the effect.  Any scattering differential cross-section is going to contain
the square of the Fourier transform of the potential.  (Read Jackson, or
something.)  For a 1/r potential, you get 1/k^2 squared, or 1/k^4.  So the
strong scattering at high frequency is due to the fact that a high frequency
photon can "get closer" to the scattering center (the electron) and so get a
larger deflection.  Long wavelength photons rarely get close enough to suffer
large angular deflections. 

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Subject: Re: Defining Photons
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Keywords: Relating photons E=MC^2 criticism
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 23:56:00 GMT

sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>>Notice that masslessness have nothing to do with these questions.  It a matter
>>of spin, not mass.  Massive bosons, such as the W or Z, if we were able 
>>to make enough of them to produce a semiclassical state, would behave much
>>like photons, not at all like electrons.  

jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes...
>And it also follows that large numbers of neutrinos would act more like 
>electrons than photons, despite the fact that they are massless. 

Hmmm... I disagree with you both :-)

I think anything with a charge will appear as a particle in the classical
limit, whether boson or fermion. Like a W in a cloud chamber. And anything
which interacts as weakly as a neutrino would behave like a wave.

Anyway, I wonder if our non-scientist friend knows that electrons are really
massless, and that they only _look_ massive because of thier interaction
with the higgs.

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: SSC cost
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:57:29 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
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In article <MATT.92Jul27102307@physics2.berkeley.edu>, matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes...
> 
>Further, as the paper he quotes clearly says, this is the "raw" data
>rate---that is, this is the data rate if you wrote every single event,
>at every single beam crossing, to tape.  The whole point of any
>experiment in high-energy physics, though, is that in most
>interactions, almost nothing interesting happens, so you don't bother
>to look at those events at all.  Any high-energy detector selects out
>those events which are likely to be worth studying, triggers on those
>events, and writes only those events to tape.  Typically, somewhere
>between 1 and 10 events per second (*not* one hundred million per
>second) get written to tape.  This is another six or seven orders of
>magnitude. 

Writing 100's of events per second to tape is a big number, and will 
probably be more data than you could ever use - provided you have correctly 
designed your experiment and trigger.  This amounts probably to some few
megabytes per second for SDC.

If you wrote more you could never analyze them anyway in the lifespan of 
any graduate student, so why bother!  That's why a good trigger is so 
crucial.  

Anyone who suggests that a dedector has been designed or is needed to 
record Terabytes per second is in fantasyland.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: melin@hlrz24.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de (S. Melin)
Subject: Re: Noah's formation: The rainbow
Organization: Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (KFA), Germany
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 08:27:37 GMT
X-Posted-From: hlrz24.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <14flcvINNi08@agate.berkeley.edu>, ted@physics1 (Emory F. Bunn) writes:
 [stuff deleted]
|> >
|> >The light is refracted in the raindrops, the inner rainbow is 
|> >generated by one refraction in the drop, the second one by
|>                   **********
|> >two refractions.  With this information you might draw a 
|>      ***********
|> >little sketch, this should clarify everything:
|> >Draw two spheres, draw the white light beams parallel, and
|> >reflect the beam once in one drop and twice in the other one.
|> >Make sure that the resulting beams "meet in one eye".
|> >
|> 
|> The word "refraction" should be "reflection" in the two places marked.

You're absolutely right here, my fault... But a few lines later it should 
have been clear what I meant.

Regards

Stephan Melin

melin@hlrsun.hlrz.kfa-juelich.de   ||    hkf418@djukfa11.bitnet

Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.philosophy.tech,talk.religion.misc
From: franl@centerline.com (Fran Litterio)
Subject: Re: Structure of Time
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 01:17:04 GMT

st0o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Steven Timm) writes:

> Could it be that the reason fewer young ladies are interested in 
> physics and cosmology nowadays is because they receive such rough
> treatment at the hands of know-it-all netters?  It seems to me that for
> a little 
> girl of 5 years old to even know about neutrinos and radiation and
> electricity  is quite a bit to ask.

This guy's 5-year-old doesn't know a neutrino from a potato-pancake.
She babbles stories that a 5-year-old would think up, and her father
believes that her stories are God speaking to him allegorically, so he
"interprets" what she says as being about physics and the "structure
of time".

> After all , it was only ten years ago or less that the rage in cosmology 
> was to dream up new particles and determine what effect they might 
> have on the universe.  Why not the space potato?  It's no more exotic
> than many particles which well-known theorists have published papers on, and 
> are no more likely to exist than the space potato.

I must admit, I thought it rather exotic of him to list the Bible in
his bibliography.
--
franl@centerline.com   || Fran Litterio                               
uunet!centerline!franl || CenterLine Software R&D                     
617-498-3255           || 10 Fawcett St, Cambridge, MA, USA 02138-1110
From: rsf1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Robert S. Fritzius)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Relativity
Date: 24 Jul 92 05:33:31 GMT

Cross-posted from alt.sci.physics.new-theories
 
In article <1992Jul22.150401.15820@news.endg.convex.com> Steve Warren
writes:
 
>The biggest practical reason that FTL travel is impossible (unless new
>discoveries in physics are made - that are not anticipated right now)
>is because of the mass increase phenomenum.  This has been repeatedly
>verified experimentally, . . .
 
In 1908 Swiss physicist Walter Ritz proposed an emission theory of general
electrodynamics(1) in which the mass of charged bodies do not increase
toward, relativistically, but rather that their masses remain constant and
the electrodynamic acceleration forces approach zero.
 
His rationale was that charged bodies emit fluxes of emission particles
(which bear a resemblance to virtual photons).  The fluxes of emission
particles, traveling at the speed of light, constituted the (finite speed
of propagation) electrodynamic intermediate between charged bodies.
 
Suppose we have a test charge (an electron) that has just passed through
an opening in a metallic plate.  A negative charge applied to the plate
will accelerate the electron away from the plate.  Ritz's theory has it
that the strength of the accelerating force on the test charge, produced
by the emission particles comming from the negatively charged plate, is
directly proportional to their closure velocity with respect to the test
charge.
 
If the test charge is moving very slowly with respect to the plate, the
closure rate of the emission particles will be on the order of the speed
of light.  On the other hand, if the electron passed through the opening
at, say,  0.9 C, then the closure rate of the emission particles with
respect to the test charge, would be 0.1 C.  According to Ritz the slower
closure rate would result in a decreased accelerating force.
 
With a test charge travelling at .999999 C the overtaking emission
particles would essentially be "flying formation" on the test charge and
would cause negligible acceleration to the test charge.
 
This rambling has been rather one-sided and leaves a lot out, but comes
the question:
 
How do we unambiguously determine whether mass increases relativistically
or whether electromagnetic forces decrease relativistically?
 
 
(1) Ritz, W. "Recherches Critiques sur l'Electrodynamique Generale,"  Ann.
    Chim. et d. Chimie, Vol 13 (1908) p. 145
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
             Robert S. (Bob) Fritzius  rsf1@Ra.MsState.edu
                    I have a slobber-proof keyboard!
      Low-Tec  P.O. Box 1327 Starkville, MS 39759   (601) 324-1284