Just a glimpse (of school).....

Not very much to say today either. Or is there? I slept about 11 hours last night to make up for the one before and I have to say... I'm in a pretty good mood today. Came to work and chatted with Cammelot, and after she left I did some much needed homework, and now blogging.
Since I have homework on the brain, consider this my formal sinister announcement to bore all of you with some of it.

Rayleigh Scattering: basically the answer to the question "why is the sky blue?"

The molecules of air basically scatter the blue light wavelengths from the sun. The other colors are just transmitted through. This is caused by the "size" of the air molecules. The other wavelengths are too small to react, the just pass on through, and because blue is scattered, that is why we see a blue sky and not just space like at night with the sun in change of the moon.

The electrons in an atom can absorb and emit photons (light "particles") when they change energy states. The energy of the light "excites" the electrons and the move to a different energy state. But what goes up must come down, and when the electron moves to a lower state a photon is emitted. That is why metal glows when it is hot. The atoms receive energy (in this case heat) and then photons are emitted from the atoms.

That was just a topic from the reading we had to do a while ago. Most of the homework is calculating the angle change when light passes from one medium to another, and the usefullness of Snell's Law. That is actually kind of easy. The equation is below. This is not the extent of what I'm doing, or in all of it's detailed beauty, just thought I would let you in, and if you don't like it, I will stop. I just find it very interesting and fun.

Remember: the semester just got started, it will get a whole lot more complicated!









T.