/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7734908]

How does wireless information transmission work? I don't understand. If photons are particles, surely it isn't something inefficient as blanketing in a partial sphere around the source. Is it reading oscillations in a magnetic field? No, because it has a wavelength and frequency. Why does it have a wavelength and frequency if it is also granular?

Is the notion of a singular photon moving actually an illusion, and it's all just spikes in some sort of field being generated?

What the fuck is going on here? For fucking fuck's sake I'm sick of all this seemingly self contradicting bullshit, and need to reconcile this mess. I ought to just get rid of myself, then cram as much quantum field whatever into my head as possible. Why the fuck does a RADIO WORK, GODDAMN IT.

[Anonymous No.7734941]

>>7734908
Now wait just a second here... As I say this it hits me, is this concept of a discrete "photon", a magnetic field and an electric, all actually parts of the same thing?

Some kind of field itself?

[Anonymous No.7735051]

Please respond.

[Anonymous No.7735058]

>>7734941
Congratulations, you just discovered the energy-matter duality.

Yeah, it is as inefficient as "blanketing the area with photons" except at energies where they mostly pass through walls and obstacles.

How does a sea beacon broadcast its own location and ID? By modulating the light it scatters all around.

Receiving is somewhat different because instead of photoelectric, you tap into the electromagnetic field changing it into modulated AC current by using the antenna.

[Anonymous No.7735064]

>>7735058
>By modulating
And this is what throws me off. My mind refuses to do anything but try to understand what it is that is being "modulated", and how. What this thing is composed of, and a spectrum of what it is capable of doing and why. It would be far more effective to just accept that it does things, understand that "doing" relative to other things, form abstract and intuitive ideas about it while working from the top down.

But no. Something in me refuses. I don't want to, and I can't make myself want to, and therefore I can't. I want to break down mechanically what the most base layers we've been able to measure and understand are actually doing, then build from that. It just isn't going smoothly.

>you tap into the electromagnetic field changing it into modulated AC current
So how is this material using this field to generate AC? Is it filtered and amplified later, or does this antenna just receive anything (and how do I figure out what it's capable of receiving and why)?

There's all this shit. And I still don't understand what or why this field actually is. Is the field itself in some flux at a frequency (and thus the carrier), and what you put in after is what's doing this modulating by generating detectable peaks?

[Anonymous No.7735095]

Sorry. I'm very sleep deprived and feel a bit addled. I feel like such a broken, and deficient thing. I don't often bother to look at myself from other people's perspectives, but when I do, I can't imagine it's anything positive. All my hangups and fixations are self limiting, and a bit pitiful. A thing of disgust. And all built and clung to for some reason or another. Eventually I'm just going to be trapped in my own head with all the things I've failed to do.

Never mind all this shit, or this thread. I'm just going to go make some valerian tea and sleep.

[Anonymous No.7735189]

>>7734908
Ignore photons for now. The energy of radio is so low, and its wavelength so long, that it behaves essentially 100% like a classical wave.

Just think of electromagnetic radiation as propagating waves in the electromagnetic field.

The antenna creates an oscillating magnetic field around it, which induces an oscillating electric field, which induces an oscillating magnetic field, etc. etc.

The frequency of these oscillations is the frequency. Because these oscillations propagate, there's distance between peaks and troughs in the fields; this is the wavelength.

Look into classical electromagnetism and maxwell's laws. You can't really understand this without understanding them first, just like it's hard to understand relativity without being familiar with Newton's laws.

>Why does it have a wavelength and frequency if it is also granular

Quantum physics. Actually, electrons and atoms and everything else has a wavelength too; the wavelength of massive particles is just very small at normal energies.

>Is the notion of a singular photon moving actually an illusion, and it's all just spikes in some sort of field being generated?
Sort of. Photons *are* waves in the electromagnetic field; but because fields are quantized these waves take on a, discrete nature. Likewise, electrons are waves in the electron field, etc. etc.

Feynman's QED is an excellent pop-science book that will help you understand how photon particles create classical fields and waves on large scales.