Richard Feynman talks about light

I'm sitting next to a swimming pool somebody dives in and she's not too pretty so I can think of something else I think of the waves since things that have formed in the water and when there's lots of people have dived in the pool there's a very great choppiness of all these waves all over the water and to think that it's possible maybe that in those ways is a clue as to what's happening in the pool that's some sort of insect or something with sufficient cleverness could sit in the corner of the pool and just be disturbed by the waves and by the nature of the irregularities and bumping of the way have figured out who jumped in where and when and where what's happening all over the pool and that's what we're doing when we're looking at something the light that comes out is waves just like in the swimming pool except in three dimensions instead of the two dimensions of the pool it's they're going in all directions and we have a eighth vintage black hole into which these things go which is particularly sensitive to the parts of the ways that are coming in a particular direction it's not particularly sensitive when they're coming in at the wrong angle which you say is from the corner of our eye and if we want to get more information the corner of eye we swivel this ball about so that the whole place to by then it's quite wonderful that we see figure out so easy that's really because the white ways are easier than the waves in the water a little bit more complicated it would have been harder for the bug than for us but it's the same idea to figure out what the thing is they were looking at at a distance and it is any kind of incredible because what I'm looking at you someone's standing to my left could see somebody who's standing it my right that is the light could be going right across this way the waves are going this way the way is it going this way the waves are going this way it's just a complete network now it's easy to think of them as arrows passing each other but that's not the way it is because all this is something shaking it's called the electric field but we don't have to bother with what it is it's just like the water height it's go up and down so some quantity is shaking about here and in a combination of motions that's so elaborate and complicated and that result is to produce an influence which I makes me see you at the same time completely undisturbed by the fact that there are influences that represent the other guys seeing him on this side so that this is tremendous mess of waves all over in space which we call her which is the light bouncing around the room and going from one thing to the other because of course most of the room doesn't have eighth inch black holes it's not interested in that light but the lights there anyway and we do bounces off this and it bounces off that that all this is going on and yet we can sort it out with this instrument but beside of all that you see that those waves that I was talking about in the water maybe they're so big some of them and then you could have slower swashes which are longer and shorter perhaps our animal who's making his study is only using waves between this length of Natalee so it turns out that the eye is only using waves between this length and that length except those two lengths are hundred millions and hundred thousandths of an inch under thousandth of an HP and what about the slowest swashes the waves that go more slowly that have a longer distance crest to trot those represent heat we feel those but while I doesn't see them focused very well we don't in fact at all at the shorter ways are blue to light you know every and the longer waves of red but when it gets long and that we call it infrared all this is in there at the same time that's the heat pit vipers that you got down here in the desert they have a little thing that they can see the longer waves and pick up mice which are radiating their heat their longer waves by their body heat by looking at them with this eye which is the pit of the pit viper but we can't we don't are able to do that and then these ways get longer and longer and you know all through the same space all these things are going on at the same time so that in this space there's not only your my vision of you but information from Moscow radio it's being broadcast at the present moment and the seeing of somebody from Peru all the radio waves are just the same kind of weighs only longer waves and there's the radar from the airplane which is looking at the ground to figure out where it is which is coming through this room at the same time plus the x-ray cosmic rays and all these other things which is the same kind of waves exactly the same ways but shorter faster or longer slower it's exactly the same thing so this big field this this area of irregular motions of this electric field is vibration contains this tremendous information and it's all really there that's what gets you if you don't believe it then you pick a piece of wire and connect it to a box and in the wire the electrons will be pushed back and forth by this electric field swashing just at the right speed for the certain kind of long ways and you turn some knobs on the box to get the sloshing just right and you hear radio Bosca now you know that it was there how else did it get there it was there all the time there's only when you turn on the radio that it you're noticing but that all these things are going through the room of the same that which everybody knows when you but you gotta stop and think about it to really get the pleasure about the complexity the inconceivable nature of nature in January 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded

Channel: sdfhsfh

Views: 1,571,698

Keywords: Physics, Light, Nature, Feynman, Waves

Id: FjHJ7FmV0M4

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2007