Sunlight and Sound

Thank you Gisteron, I needed the laugh! :woohoo:

How would I've answered if I lived 4000 years ago?...

Sunlight particles? Sound waves? OMFG you must be in some evil bond with Apophis! Heresy! Heresy! Its all magical and you know it! Did your slave mentor not teach you all that infallible wisdom?!

Enjoy! :D

You'd have answered on your iStone.

I am not refering to any one in particular, but let's make sure we all play nice.

I'm doing a course in 'sound' at the moment and they define sound as the experience of hearing pressure waves in the air, and not the actual pressure waves. Needless to say I got that exam answer wrong... they should have said noise is the phenomena and sound the experience or something because in society we use sound to mean err, sound/noise/pressure. So then I'd have to assume 'sound waves' to mean experiencing sound in patterns resembling waves.

Akkarin wrote: The size of a particle of 'sun light' would be between 400 - 700 nanometers. That is the range of the visible spectrum of light. But the sun gives out many variants of that, such as UV as an example. But that is not 'sun light' essentially, because we cannot see it with our eyes

How big is an iceberg - what you can see above water or what your ship smashes into unseen under the surface. Dont forget either that sunlight burns your skin and that is mostly in the UV range.

I understand though you dont get much sun in the UK

Gisteron wrote:

Adder wrote: This graph shows some info on 'how big' sunlight is;

Solar Radiation Spectrum

That, too, doesn't illustrate the magnitude of sunlight but only how many of what wavelength EM waves are being emitted by the sun.

Doesnt it? I thought the Y axis showed the magnitute, versus the X axis showing the wavelength. I knew it wasnt answering the question though and its why I said "This graph shows some info".

The original question is in a form which is not in line with scientific understanding about the nature of light, so people posting different parts of the puzzle might in part help answer whatever is being asked by the question. I think its better to try and answer and miss the mark slightly then not answer at all.... or worse pick on people trying to answer (no-one in particular, just thinking out loud).

I dont see the philosophical question on how big is a 'particle' of sunlight. Can you rephrase?

Keep thinking.

Try using images and not words.

Use terms of wonder and not science.

OK, my answer is between 10 and 14 hours;

oh you want philosophy... well quantum mechanics states that light is both a wave and particle whose position and energy cannot be known simultaneously. The size of a photon is a probability distribution across both space and time.

Furthermore, guage theory says that a photon is the Abelian U(1) symmetry of a complex number, which reflects the ability to vary the phase of a complex number without affecting observables or real valued functions made from it, such as the energy or the Lagrangian.

Rickie The Grey wrote: Use terms of wonder and not science.

In fairness the words behind the explanation are both

Adder wrote:

Gisteron wrote:

Adder wrote: This graph shows some info on 'how big' sunlight is;

Solar Radiation Spectrum

That, too, doesn't illustrate the magnitude of sunlight but only how many of what wavelength EM waves are being emitted by the sun.

Doesnt it? I thought the Y axis showed the magnitute, versus the X axis showing the wavelength. I knew it wasnt answering the question though and its why I said "This graph shows some info".

Yes, true. Shouldn't have phrased my critique like that; I apologize. I just meant that the question about the actual dimensions of sunlight particles isn't being answered (I'm not even sure it is known). The diagram displays the amount of energy transfered on different EM frequencies and not the size of any of them. So yes, the light 'magnitude' or - to phrase it correctly - the light 'flux' (not sure it is even the same as 'intensity', as I'd think tha the intensity is the wave amplitude; but then again - there is somewhere around no relevance at all that wave amplitude has to the physical interaction of light to other things) is in fact displayed. The 'size' of the particular waves or particles (depending on the understanding of light that is being applied) is not..