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Re: Capacitor charge, were is it?

  Chip I don't know why you let this one through! 

  Considering the errors in it.   ...FWB

[ I could give any number of excuses, but what it comes down to is 
  "oops!" -- Chip]

>Message-ID: <199611140649.XAA17822-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
>Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 23:49:16 -0700
>From: Tesla List <tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
>To: Tesla-list-subscribers-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
>Subject: Re: Capacitor charge, were is it?

  [ snip ]


>Although it's true that photons don't have a rest mass, they certainly do have
>mass (in every literal sense of the word) when propagating through space.  

   Not so!!  What we have is unclear thinking here.  A photon is NEVER
   at rest!  All photons are massless and travel at the speed of light
   in whatever medium they're in.  A greater index of refraction means
   they travel slower.  And if any particle travels at the speed of
   light then it CANNOT have mass otherwise it would have infinite
   mass by relativity.   So a photon contains energy but not mass.


>A photon's mass can be calculated:   
>Photon Energy = h x v, where v = photon frequency and h = Planck's Constant
>E = MC^2,    so Photon Mass = Photon Energy/C^2

   This is the total mass AND energy that could be produced if the
   photon were to transform into, say, a positron and an electron.


>F = MA does in fact hold for photons, as evidenced by the fact that gravity
>can bend light.  The light from distant stars is quite noticably bent by the 
>gravitational pull of the sun.  


   This is a clear example of the old saying that a little bit of
   knowledge is a dangerous thing.  It leads to incorrect conclusions.
   The mass of the sun curves the space it's in and so the light
   travels an apparently curved path to a remote observer.


>I was wrong when I stated that any massless charge would instantly be
>accelerated to an infinite speed.  I believe that the correct answer is
>that it would instantly accelerate to the speed of light, which I feel
>>would eliminate the possibility of the existence of a massless charge,
>>at least in electrostatic scenarios where charges are stationary
>>
>-GL

   Now you're beginning to think more clearly.

>>   [ snip ] 
>> who dares question the belief system is just laughed at.  Science a
>> least respects human life but not the spirit of disagreement the way i
>> once did.
>>
>> Richard Hull, TCBOR
>
>
>It's all too true that some people in the scientific community have fallen
>into a rut, and have developed a one-track approach towards dealing with
>the world around them.  Any society will have a number of such types.

   I think you're right, but if you would write me privately I'd like
   to get your views on that.  Maybe we can get a little bit of our
   own list going on the side talking about particle physics.  Thanks
   in advance.



>Rest assured, however, that not all scientists are like that! Really! 
>
>If you discover some bit of science that is inconsistent with the real
>world, then you're supposed to hunt down the exact part that's broken,
>and hold it up for all of the world to see.  Then you become famous, and
>get some unit of measurement named after you.  That's the way it's
>supposed to work, right?  So no more complaining that science is a fraud --
>the world is waiting to cheer the person that can prove it!
>
>-GL


    Well said!


 Fred W. Bach ,    Operations Group        | Internet: music-at-triumf.ca
 TRIUMF (TRI-University Meson Facility)    | Voice:  604-222-1047 loc 6327/7333
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