mse110
Journal Entry: Fri Jan 18, 2008, 12:21 PM
sitting in class today learning about light waves and how they act as both a wave and as a massless particle, the photon.
and how einstein proved that photon were packets of energy and not a continuous stream by his experiment with electrons and light, labeled the photo-electric effect.
and then i had an epiphany, as small as it was:
photon...
photo..
photography.
a ha.
as i previously knew, the inability to properly describe light has caused us to use two separate descriptions for light: the wave and the photon, which act very differently. A wave can hit and reflect and travel; a photon, which has no mass, still manages to have momentum and can collide with other particles like electrons.
lucky for me not only are we discussing waves in solid state chemistry but also in physics of optics and thermodynamics.
a wave is a periodical disturbance traveling through a medium. granted this is for mechanical waves, such as a string, and not electromagnetic waves, such as light. yet that is just it though. a traveling wave transfers energy over a distance, not matter as my book puts it. Each wave is made up of periodic pulses, or each flick of the string. The energy you put into the string by flicking it travels down the string and to the wall it hits. It this not the packet of energy we call a photon?
Is this the string theory then? That everything is connected by strings, woven like a blanket (like in i heart huckabees), where the butterfly flapping its wings in africa 100 years from sends a wave down to create a storm today?
I know the string theory deals with explaining quantum mechanics, and that einstein's photoelectric effect in proving that the energy from the lightwaves was in packets not continuous was the beginning of the development of quantum mechanics.
..
what can i say.
im easily passionate.
by the way, i just finished reading brave new world. I found huxley to be one of the better authors in placing general statements about life. I had just read the picture of dorian gray, and was extraordinarily displeased with wilde's use of lord henry in have the most randomly profound statements falling out of his mouth. For shame oscar wilde. for shame.
the best part of brave new world has to be the ending, for i cant get the last words out of my head. Without stating what happened everyone knows. Yet it was written with such an echo it should be a poem itself rather than the ending to a piece of fiction.
"south-south-west, south, south-east, east...."
yet i dont find the ending quite as tragically horrible as i would have liked. Nothing made me think back and think, earlier in the book he was different, it was different, this could have been avoided. I dont really dont feel sad about the ending as i have in other books.
Now in the middle of girl, interrupted, when the supporting cast member hung herself. That caught me off guard.
by the way, i would like to have a tea party. But i dont have any of the resources to possibly pull it off.
- Mood:
Artistic - Reading: brave new world
- Drinking: tea