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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: why do a lot of people confuse between interference and diffraction?
« on: 06/03/2024 10:06:07 »a single source of wavefronts generates waves that will diffract when they encounter surfaces.Pedant hat firmly in place, I would say "edges" , not "surfaces". Surfaces reflect and/or absorb, but em radiation doesn't "bend" round a surface!
I've been pondering on the photon model of radio waves. We generate them by a continuous process - essentially, sinusoidal alternating current in a wire - with no essential discontinuity of frequency or duration. The energy received from a radio transmitter depends only on how long you listen to it - it doesn't arrive in discrete packets. Why assume that it is quantised?
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