Thursday, April 01, 2004

april fools

yeah, it's april fool, foo. too bad i got nothing in mind to fool those foos.

had 3 hours worth of physics, and another hour of another physics. i'm happy. life is much better when you do more physics than anything else.
don't believe me?
TRY IT

the thing about de broglie wavelength still bothers me. if we modify the equation, we got m·v=h/lambda
multiply both sides by c,
then multiply both sides by gamma, the relativistic constant.
now you have on the left, gamma·m·v·c, and since gamma·m·v is the relativistic momentum of an object with v approaches c, on the left hand side you have p·c
the right hand side, you have gamma·h·c/lambda, and since h·c/lambda equals h·f which then equals E, the energy of a photon, you get gamma·E on the right hand side
which leaves us with
p · c = gamma · E

WTF is that? invariant mass gives m^2 = E^2 - (p·c)^2, but lambda·E? double-you-tee-eff?

nev told me that it can't be done since m on the left is mass of electron and the right hand side of the equation is the energy of a photon, which pretty much has no rest mass. thus i was equating two different things. ok, that's true. but that was before i put in the relativistic factor gamma. now the left side of the equation is relativistic, which means it can go with v approaches c. so now i can try to relate it to a photon. after all, the special theory of relativity IS a correction to the classical theory when objects like me, you, and our poo start moving with velocity approaching the speed of light.

so now that i can relate m·v=h/lambda, multiplying both sides by the same qualia pretty much gives me the same thing. so there's nothing illegal in multiplying both sides with c, a constant, and the relativistic factor gamma.

what the hell is that equation? is that just simply wrong? or does that mean the momentum of an electron, or anything with a rest mass, when travelling at velocity approaching the speed of light, is somehow related to the energy of a photon by the relativistic factor? i mean, de broglie said that every object with mass and velocity emits a certain wavelength, and this is clearly the missing thing that caused a disconnect between the interpretation of a photon being particle-like and at the same time, wave-like. so i guess it implies that an electron moving at certain velocity can also be particle-like and wave-like simultaneously. thus electrons have wave nature.

but here's the thing i'm confused about. for a photon, E = p·c since it has no rest mass. for everything else, the invariant mass should apply. but here derived from the de broglie law, we have p·c = gamma·E for an electron. where has the mass gone? does the relativistic factor gamma relates the energy E of an object with v approaches c with its momentum p·c?

or--again--is this whole thing completely wrong and i'm a dumbass?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Leave a comment: