How we Manage to See.

Imagine you are in a toy shop at night but with all the lights on. You are all alone and everything is still. You look across the room at a large doll with Yellow hair, a multi coloured striped dress and black shoes. How are you actually seeing her?

According to the physicists it is due to photons traveling from the doll to your eye.

OK, but what is a photon?

According to the physicists it is,  (and I quote)  “A quantum of light or of electro-magnetic radiation……..”. Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology. [Not their fault, that’s what they were told by the physicists.]

Do you understand it now?

Of course not, they tell you that to stop you from asking ‘really difficult’ questions. If you persist and make a nuisance of yourself, you may get the admission that the physicists consider that a photon is ‘a squiggly line that can be like a particle.’, the squiggly bit is the  ‘Wavelike nature of light’. Check in your physics books and you will find graphic illustrations of these strange items.

Never mind, you will not get any sensible explanation so let us return to our toy store.

We are looking towards the large doll and we see it by the  squiggly lines, sorry, photons, that are traveling from the various lights to the doll and then traveling to your eye. Simple, isn’t it, now you know how we see things, according to the physicists.

It is simple if you are not interested in physics, and it will do for the children.

However, you have billions of photons traveling in all directions from the lights. These photons are reflected off all the toys and walls and floor and again scattered in all directions. During all this scattering they change from white photons into yellow, red and blue photons. Some remain as white photons. According to the physicists we also have purple, light green, dark green, mauve, pink, cyan, magenta, grey, khaki etcetera. photons. [Odd really, if white light is composed of all the other colours, then a white photon would have to split into 100s of different coloured photons!]

Now ask your physicist how all the white photons change into differently coloured photons. Or better still, don’t, because you will not get an answer.

Now consider a a single Red photon travelling from the doll to your eye. It is crossing the paths of billions of other photons, of different colours, all travelling in different directions. Apparently it does this without colliding with, or being affected by, all the other photons.

Apparently, there is so much space between all these photons that only a very few are affected by collisions and therefore we don’t have a problem!

But what about the billions of atoms and molecules that stand in the path between the doll and your eye? Do they not have any affect on the photons? Do photons pass unimpeded through them?

Let us review the description of a photon, “A quantum of light or of electro-magnetic radiation……..”.

The first part is meaningless, “A photon is a quantum of light”. It explains nothing, it is just an attempt to appear scientific.[See Quantum Leap]

The second part is also meaningless, “A photon is a quantum of electro-magnetic radiation”. It also  explains nothing, but at least it gives us something to work with.

In reality the entry in the dictionary should have read,” We think that a photon is a bit of light or a bit of electro-magnetic radiation or even something entirely different”

What is ‘electro-magnetic radiation‘.

Basically it is a magnetic field created by passing an electrical current through a coil wrapped around an iron or other metal core. Used in electric motors, generators, solenoids(electrically operated door locks and latches) and many other items of equipment.

Some confusion here, light cannot be composed of iron, copper wire and electrical supplies. The confusion is with the physics establishment

However, it sounds impressive and is used by physicists for virtually any phenomena that they don’t understand. They don’t understand what electricity is, they don’t understand magnetism, they have no idea what light is and they don’t understand mechanics. The expression “electro-magnetic radiation” is one borrowed from engineering, and means exactly as stated above.

However, radiation is a rather catch-all word which has various meanings.  You can say that the spokes of a wheel radiate from the hub. If you drop a stone into water the waves created radiate outwards. So there are two main accepted meanings of radiation. One means radially orientated to a centre point and the other means traveling away from a centre point.

If there is a magnetic aspect of photons then they must affect each other. If they have a magnetic aspect then they should be affected by other magnets. They should be affected by iron. It is therefore clear that a photon is not “a quantum of electro-magnetic radiation”.

What are we left with from the dictionary description   “A photon is a quantum of electro-magnetic radiation”?. We are only left with the “electro” part, which means electron.

So, what is an “electron”?

An electron is the only sub-atomic particle that has any evidence for its existence. No electron has ever been seen, even under the most powerful microscopes in existence. [No atoms have ever been seen either, despite beautifully done computer graphics created by artists]. Molecules are easy to see because you yourself are a molecule, a grain of sand is a molecule, copper wire is a molecule. Yes, I know that physicists would argue that the human body is not a molecule, but that it is a collection of molecules help together by ‘molecular/atomic glue’. Or to put it another way, magic. I say this because they cannot say how this glue could work or what the glue is made of.

However, there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to admit the existence of the electron.

An electron is a negatively charged particle. It is assumed that all electrons are identical, but this is obviously impossible to determine.

A lot more to come on this. Don’t worry, mechanics will come to the rescue.