Pet Scifi-Project
- Thread starter Concordia
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In photography the Inverse Square Law (I hope I get this right, I sold back the textbook that had it.) of light stats that, when you have light emanating from a source-say in this case a hand-held strobe, as the distance doubles, the light falls off by the degree of increased distance squared.
Say my subject is 5ft away, and the wall behind them is 15ft away from me. I take my picture, the strobe goes off. Now, because I'me good at what I do, the subject is in perfect light-but the wall in the background is dark. This is bacause the light from my from my strobe has lost a lot of it's intensity by the time it got there.
Due to my adjusting the exposure, the light that reached my subject is approximating the full power of the strobe (1/1), 10ft from me, or double the distance i have the power set for, the light has fallen to 1/2 intensity. At three times the distance (3 squared) I'm down to 1/9 power.
I hope it wasn't too badly written, but I did find a link:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/isq.html#isq
As LASERs are a form of light radiation, I was wondering if this might affect them.
Say my subject is 5ft away, and the wall behind them is 15ft away from me. I take my picture, the strobe goes off. Now, because I'me good at what I do, the subject is in perfect light-but the wall in the background is dark. This is bacause the light from my from my strobe has lost a lot of it's intensity by the time it got there.
Due to my adjusting the exposure, the light that reached my subject is approximating the full power of the strobe (1/1), 10ft from me, or double the distance i have the power set for, the light has fallen to 1/2 intensity. At three times the distance (3 squared) I'm down to 1/9 power.
I hope it wasn't too badly written, but I did find a link:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/isq.html#isq
As LASERs are a form of light radiation, I was wondering if this might affect them.
SpaceInvader
Spaceman
Quick comment on the laser thing, since lasers are really fast and invisible, when I play a game, I just presume that what they are calling a "laser" is really some sort of plasma beam or something.
lasers will be unnaffected by inverse square law, as they dont expand in a sphere, furthermore, lasers are polarised finely tuned beams of light that have very little spreading (the class of the laser affects spreading and intensity) as a result they act more like a theoretical beam than light from a lamp does
not true they are just not as severly dampened as light eminating from a handlamp is. Lasers are still a highly focused stream of particles which dissipate and lose energy as they travel through a medium. That's why we have yet to see laser pistols or rifles in a military arsenal. I takes alot of power to emit a beam that can carry far enough and still deliver a significant amount of heat energy, the storage cell would be huge. Take a laser you can get for a pointer or a pistol sight. Point it at a wall 5 feet away from you and then point it at a wall 15 feet away. The beam is larger due to dispersion (also due to the far from perfect emitter these devices have).
C-ya
qyoting viper "not true they are just not as severly dampened as light eminating from a handlamp is. Lasers are still a highly focused stream of particles which dissipate and lose energy as they travel through a medium. That's why we have yet to see laser pistols or rifles in a military arsenal. I takes alot of power to emit a beam that can carry far enough and still deliver a significant amount of heat energy, the storage cell would be huge. Take a laser you can get for a pointer or a pistol sight. Point it at a wall 5 feet away from you and then point it at a wall 15 feet away. The beam is larger due to dispersion (also due to the far from perfect emitter these devices have)."
Its true that lasers are dampened by distance but its not inverse square law and thus i am right. photons are made of photons which are massless and thus are minimally affected by matter light slows because it interacts with the matter. And i do believe i covered dispersion in my comment
Its true that lasers are dampened by distance but its not inverse square law and thus i am right. photons are made of photons which are massless and thus are minimally affected by matter light slows because it interacts with the matter. And i do believe i covered dispersion in my comment
DoomsdayPlague
Spaceman
Yeah I see what your saying or it might be like a concentrated accumilation of the lasers energy which is released in a blast like the one in the game?
Actually yes they do, but in a far field approximation. The inverse square law in a laser is slightly offset at close distances by the coherancy and the collimation of the light beam but when you look at a far field approximation (which is usually considered as several hundred wavelengths of a EM wave -or light beam- away) the laser is but a point source emitter and behaves with the inverse square law. With high operating frequency lasers, I think its pretty safe to assume that far-field takes place. Most EM calcs are done in far-field where a cartesian coordinate system can be used, because, well, using a polar one is just a bitch
C-ya
Somewhat true, the effect is more pronounced in air because of the amount of particles dissipating the laser. A vacuum still has interacting particles ('space dust', light particles - or photons) they are just not as prevalent. Still the best way to look at a laser (at least the ones I work with for etching purposes) is to use a flashlight, same principle, very low tech. IF you shine a flashlight in a vacuum, you get a bigger illuminated area on the opposite wall than you started with. This is due to the angle the light is projected from the 'emitter'. Same holds true for a laser though, this effect is combated by previously mentioned techniques, the light is still emitted at an infitesimally small angle that adds up over time (far-field approximation).
And to my knowledge, photons are masses, yet they interact with whatever they come in contact with. Someone with a little more physics background than me take this one.
I was doing some math in my head and it seems that if we believe what the HUD is telling us in WC we could theoretically 'see' the laser beam. Usual combat speeds are around 400kps which is 4e5 m/s. The speed of light is 3e8 m/s. The HUD could be programed (as commented upon earlier) to show a pilot a reference for the laser. This would mean that the if you were firing at a ship about 1000 k away it would take around 0.04 seconds for the laser to hit it for those 4 hundreths of a second the HUD could project the laser travelling. Hey it's a long shot but, eh.
Concordia, I thought these 2 concepts were one and the same. I though that submerging yourself into subspace allowed you to fold normal space which gives you the impression that you are travelling faster than the speed of light.
C-ya