Radio waves and prayer
Just a few words about electromagnetic radiation.......
Earlier this year I got my first ham radio license. My son got me interested. He got interested because he joined the neighborhood emergency response team and they all use handheld radios to communicate. The walkie-talkie that anyone can buy operate on the Family Radio Service frequencies in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) range have too little power and too short a range to be truly useful in a large disaster. To extend the range higher powered radios are required so we both got licensed by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) so that he could use a more powerful radio during his emergency response training and so that we could communicate in case of a real disaster. Our city is scheduled to have a large earthquake sometime.
What interested me more than their disaster application was how these radios work. I don't mean which button to push. The dials, buttons, switches, antennas, batteries, speakers, etc. are complicated and take a long time to learn, but the physics behind these devices is even more interesting. I took college physics in 1966. I learned the rules about electrical and magnetic force fields but little about what these fields consisted, or at least I didn't remember much about them so I did a little reading and watching YouTube videos. What I discovered was pretty interesting. No one really knows what is going on.
The best videos were of Richard Feynman giving his four lecture series in Auckland, New Zealand on quantum electrodynamics (QED). Most of the lectures were about how light, a type of radio wave, behaves. He explained how his diagrams, now called Feynman diagrams, describe very accurately the phenomena that we see but not what the phenomena are. He says light, photons, are particles but have wave properties. Their behavior is described in terms of probabilities rather than yes or no. An analogy would be if you asked if your neighbor was home and instead of getting a yes or no answer were told that they were probably home, so that until you looked inside, you couldn't know.
Light is a form of electromagnetic irradiation and carries energy. The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces known in the universe, and the force responsible for most of the phenomena we observe daily with the exception of the effects gravity which is another fundamental force. The other two forces of nature occur in the nucleus of atoms and are called the 'strong force' and the 'weak force.'
The second best video was an armchair conversation with Feynman in which he talks about electromagnetic radiation. To remind you, light and radio waves are both electromagnetic radiation just at different frequencies. They are traveling around and through us all the time but we can only detect those in the 'visible light' frequencies. Unless, of course, we have a piece of wire and a crystal bent and arranged just the right way, then we can use it to detect a few of the other waves. This piece of bent wire and crystal is called a radio.
What exactly is this device detecting? Well, our eye, which is a radio of sorts, is detecting clusters of photons which is particle and a wave at the same time. There does not appear to be anything in our experience of the larger world that we can compare a photon to, to understand it better. Perhaps somewhere, someone has described in words how this wave/particle duality exists, but I haven't been able to find it, so if you know of a description please pass it along. But the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum is only detectable by these special devices called radios. The waves/particles strike a metal in which there are freely moving electrons and impart their frequency of vibration to the electrons in the metal, causing a slight fluctuating current. This fluctuating current is called an alternating current because it alternates between positive and negative. The rate of this fluctuation is its frequency, like the radio frequency you dial on your home radio.
What an incredible mystery! Here we are surrounded and penetrated by a information constantly and we can't access most of it. Since the advent of the internet and wifi (radio) we have even more 'data' passing through us than ever before. Cell phones are just an extension of this phenomenon. Once again, and I can't help myself, when we have our disaster, I know my ham radio will communicate more effectively with my son and his family than prayer. Perhaps all those people who pray should use a little scientific inquiry to figure out how and if their prayers, silent or otherwise, work and maybe create an amplifier so we can all hear them. 'Science unravels prayer'...I would love to see that headline. And the response.
Earlier this year I got my first ham radio license. My son got me interested. He got interested because he joined the neighborhood emergency response team and they all use handheld radios to communicate. The walkie-talkie that anyone can buy operate on the Family Radio Service frequencies in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) range have too little power and too short a range to be truly useful in a large disaster. To extend the range higher powered radios are required so we both got licensed by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) so that he could use a more powerful radio during his emergency response training and so that we could communicate in case of a real disaster. Our city is scheduled to have a large earthquake sometime.
What interested me more than their disaster application was how these radios work. I don't mean which button to push. The dials, buttons, switches, antennas, batteries, speakers, etc. are complicated and take a long time to learn, but the physics behind these devices is even more interesting. I took college physics in 1966. I learned the rules about electrical and magnetic force fields but little about what these fields consisted, or at least I didn't remember much about them so I did a little reading and watching YouTube videos. What I discovered was pretty interesting. No one really knows what is going on.
The best videos were of Richard Feynman giving his four lecture series in Auckland, New Zealand on quantum electrodynamics (QED). Most of the lectures were about how light, a type of radio wave, behaves. He explained how his diagrams, now called Feynman diagrams, describe very accurately the phenomena that we see but not what the phenomena are. He says light, photons, are particles but have wave properties. Their behavior is described in terms of probabilities rather than yes or no. An analogy would be if you asked if your neighbor was home and instead of getting a yes or no answer were told that they were probably home, so that until you looked inside, you couldn't know.
Light is a form of electromagnetic irradiation and carries energy. The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces known in the universe, and the force responsible for most of the phenomena we observe daily with the exception of the effects gravity which is another fundamental force. The other two forces of nature occur in the nucleus of atoms and are called the 'strong force' and the 'weak force.'
The second best video was an armchair conversation with Feynman in which he talks about electromagnetic radiation. To remind you, light and radio waves are both electromagnetic radiation just at different frequencies. They are traveling around and through us all the time but we can only detect those in the 'visible light' frequencies. Unless, of course, we have a piece of wire and a crystal bent and arranged just the right way, then we can use it to detect a few of the other waves. This piece of bent wire and crystal is called a radio.
What exactly is this device detecting? Well, our eye, which is a radio of sorts, is detecting clusters of photons which is particle and a wave at the same time. There does not appear to be anything in our experience of the larger world that we can compare a photon to, to understand it better. Perhaps somewhere, someone has described in words how this wave/particle duality exists, but I haven't been able to find it, so if you know of a description please pass it along. But the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum is only detectable by these special devices called radios. The waves/particles strike a metal in which there are freely moving electrons and impart their frequency of vibration to the electrons in the metal, causing a slight fluctuating current. This fluctuating current is called an alternating current because it alternates between positive and negative. The rate of this fluctuation is its frequency, like the radio frequency you dial on your home radio.
What an incredible mystery! Here we are surrounded and penetrated by a information constantly and we can't access most of it. Since the advent of the internet and wifi (radio) we have even more 'data' passing through us than ever before. Cell phones are just an extension of this phenomenon. Once again, and I can't help myself, when we have our disaster, I know my ham radio will communicate more effectively with my son and his family than prayer. Perhaps all those people who pray should use a little scientific inquiry to figure out how and if their prayers, silent or otherwise, work and maybe create an amplifier so we can all hear them. 'Science unravels prayer'...I would love to see that headline. And the response.
Thank you sincerely for this pragmatic, scientific approach to our great need for communication, in a disaster. We're looking at comparable measures in my apartment complex. And, you've prompted me to talk with my son about this pursuit. Yet, I'll reserve some actions for plain ol' prayer...to some beneficent, tho' immeasurable, waves of energy.
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