How we see colour requires certain frequencies of light we don't want to see being absorbed.
A decent mirror has as near to nil trace levels of absorption. Absorption would likely be caused not just by an absorbent material, but how the materials molecular lattice is applied. (Absorption through diffusion)
A mirrors surface lattice therefore would have to be densely packed, but even then there is the question of the angle of it plane in relationship to the light source. (The most reflective mirror is a
Dielectric mirror (wikipedia.org))
Quote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Egv6iO3dI
"I was incorrectly assuming that the wave is basically only on the main beam, but that's not true. Even for a laser. The light spreads out quite a lot. I know that's hard to visualize, but, and you can see that the light actually spreads out quite far. So really the light here is spreading just like this. And so there's plenty of wave that touches all of these weird bits of the mirror... "
How do you think you could be anywhere but in front of the laser (its very target, IOW) and still see the laser beam at all, if some it was not spreading out in every direction?
(Oct 26, 2025 09:21 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Egv6iO3dI
"I was incorrectly assuming that the wave is basically only on the main beam, but that's not true. Even for a laser. The light spreads out quite a lot. I know that's hard to visualize, but, and you can see that the light actually spreads out quite far. So really the light here is spreading just like this. And so there's plenty of wave that touches all of these weird bits of the mirror... "
How do you think you could be anywhere but in front of the laser (its very target, IOW) and still see the laser beam at all, if some it was not spreading out in every direction?
I was thinking the same thing.
Looking Glass notes that the interference filter laid over the mirror might be a way to distinguish between light as waves and light as photons. Also pointing out that Feynman insists light is particles while elsewhere lecturing on light as waves. As I see it the complexity (magic?) of photons arises from the ability of a single photon to do everything whole continuous wave does .. but there's only one of it .. statistically it will build up the same image as you'd get with strong illumination which is easy to analyse as waves. If the analysis of a photon predicts something that you wouldn't see with 'waves' then the problem lies with the analysis (or the interpretation of it).
From Veritaserum:
"When you add up the phases they cancel out. The only exception is the paths that are closest to the path of least action because these paths are at a minimum. They point in the same direction. They constructively interfere and that’s why those are the paths that we see. Light explores all possible paths but the ones we end up seeing constructively interferes and those are the paths of least action."
In Mithuna's experiment, she points out how the light from a laser still spreads out. In Casper’s experiment, I really couldn’t tell how far away from the edge he was.
I tried it but I had to improvise. I have black paper and R/B/G lasers, but no diffraction foil, so I used the back of an old CD. It worked just as good, but I had to have the laser next to the edge of the black paper like she did.
In this experiment, the diffraction foil cancels out the paths that normally interfere with one another, right?
Very interesting! Thanks for posting it, C2!