Saturday, July 19, 2008
- sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
talking about pokemon and this at length in the same post is downright wierd, so this gets its own post.
my 25mW green semiconductor laser pointer is constantly with me in my pencil case, and being the trigger-happy person i am, i derive much joy from randomly shining it around. not in people's eyes of course. and through the course of my play i have encountered this interesting physics phenomena:
youre looking at me shining my laser light on the floor at the edge of a swimming pool (the characterisic tiles of the swimming pool tell you as much). there is a thin layer of water above the tile which the laser light is passing through.
what is with the dark fringe between the laser spot and the ring of light?
at first, i thought it was diffraction, but i didnt shine the light through any sort of small apeture for that to happen. no double slits were around either. plus, if it were diffraction, there should have been additional fringes, but there clearly arent any.
lol, a new theory just struck me as i was writing this post...the laser light simply reflects on the tile in all directions, reaches the water surface, and reflects back down forming the ring of light. too much light is lost via refraction out of the water and attenuation in the water for subsequent rings to be formed. but something doesnt make sense. laser light is highly directional...there is no way the light reflects off the tile in all directions to form a ring. even if the diffuse reflection from the tile's rough surface is accounted for, the reflections would be very uneven.
yup, i am baffled. hopefully someone i show this picture to can tell me the answer one day.
call me a no-lifer for conducting physics experiments when council JTS is in full swing, i dont mind XD
