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X-rays "faster" than the speed of light, and more refractive index questions

🕑 Added 2023-12-03 02:47:57 +0000 UTC

$X-rays "faster" than the speed of light, and more refractive index questions$

Comments

Bryan Harris

My 2 cents, I would love to see your take on diffraction and why wavelength (and not amplitude) has anything to do with how a wave passes through a slit.

Christopher Moon

Thank you - if nothing is heard from me in 2 months - please send a search party!

3blue1brown

Correct! And this follows from Snell's law, too, since the angle of incidence would be 0

Meghan

For the first question as to why slowing = bending, does that mean that if the glass isn’t positioned at an angle, then there is no bending?

Tim Ryan

Great visual explanations, as usual. One interesting consequence of the ability of something to travel fast than c in a non-vacuum medium is the phenomena "Cerenkov" radiation. This is the equivalent of a sonic boom but with light and is used in particle physics detectors to detect high energy particles . Perhaps this would be a fun thing to illustrate.

3blue1brown

It's a custom tool called Manim: https://www.3blue1brown.com/faq#manim

Carlos Yago

I have a question about your explanation in the first video, where you discuss how a wave of a single frequency causes a layer of molecules to oscillate at the same frequency as the incoming light. White light comprises a continuous spectrum of colors, each representing different frequencies. You suggest that each frequency within this spectrum induces the material to oscillate at its corresponding frequency. My question is: How do these oscillations superpose? How can the molecules oscillate simultaneously at all the different frequencies present in the continuous spectrum of white light?

Artem Kreimer

Re "There's no reason the phase can't shift forward": Can you clarify this more? If the induced wave in the material is a reaction to the propagating wave of the light, then how can a crest in the material come before the material "feels" the crest of the light? Or is this a steady state vs pulse question? Also, can the material shift back a phase more than one half-cycle, so it looks like it's shifting it forward? Sort of like how car wheels can look like they're rotating in the wrong direction. You drew the x-ray refracting in the prism as deflecting upward, when R deflects a little down and V deflects the most down. My assumption then is that UV, X, Gamma, would deflect more and more down as the frequency increases whereas radio, micro would deflect more and more up. The limits being full absorbtion/opaqueness to a frequency or full transparency. So why isn't this the case?

Nico Zimmer

As always a really nice video. The animations are so beautiful.

Christopher Moon

Hi, this must have been asked already, but - how do you create your animations, I am looking for a language/package that I could learn to develop my own material. As always in total Awe with your material. All the best CM

3blue1brown

Thanks for the catch! As you can likely tell, I'm too often blind to these kinds of typos.

Frank Leake

A bit late to the party, but refraction around a sharp edge? Apart from that a great followup video. I barely know my times tables, so these followup videos to Grants more 'challenging' videos are fantastic :-)