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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: why do a lot of people confuse between interference and diffraction?
« on: 06/03/2024 12:09:15 »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?
Ok sorry, I might have still had my topologist's hat on, where a surface can have less than two dimensions "effectively".
You can treat a barrier like a 1-dimensional 'surface' if it acts as a waveguide, more or less, e.g. a breakwater, but along the surface, not below it. That comes with the idea that it's some kind of aerial if we are talking radio waves. That 'could' be a gotcha that isn't. A radio broadcast antenna is a 1-dimensional waveguide.