Wage Slave wrote:Russell wrote:legion wrote:wagyl wrote:Russell wrote:legion wrote:Would the radiating power in number 2 apply to any metal pole sticking up outside?
That stuff is kind of freaky when you think about it, it means we are constantly being bathed in David Attenborough radiation.
The electromagnetic radiation can be absorbed by a metal pole by at most 50% in the optimal case, and the rest is re-radiated into the environment.
Yes, we are constantly bathed in electromagnetic radiation. There are nowadays even techniques to harvest energy from it (call backscattering).
I don't want to scare you guys, but the star which is at the centre of our solar system is pumping out electromagnetic radiation at a phenomenal rate -- some of it you can even freaking see with your eyes! -- and plenty of it gets through that muffling blanket called the atmosphere. Not to mention that we happily carry radio transmitters -- commonly called mobile phones -- either next to our hearts or next to our gonads.
Does that mean David Attenborough is on my gonads?
I still find it amazing that data flies through the air and magically turns into coherent information. That electronic energy can become a voice or text or an image fills me with awe. It amazes me even more that other people take this for granted.
I still find it incredible that a needle vibrating along a vinyl groove can become a sound. I can just about understand that when I blow across a hole I can produce a sound.
Physics is amazing, and the engineers who can manipulate it to do all kinds of stuff even more so.
Not physics, more just engineering but the whole notion of packet switching, and what it can achieve fills me with admiration. So clever, so efficient and so transformative. It's one thing to send a dedicated radio/TV signal to a receiver but another to be able to send and receive vast amounts of widely differing stuff all at the same time.
It is indeed amazing. BTW, I forgot to mention that a lot of math is involved too, not just physics. But it is the engineers who put it all together.