Physics Question: Are Eyeglasses Mechanical?

[Wanderer]

What was that about light not having mass? There's the whole wave/particle duality thing to bear in mind, and light can and does exert *some* force on certain objects. There's a constant stream of particles coming from the sun called the Solar Wind. They are a part of the EM (that's electro-magnetic spectrum) just as visible light is yes?

And what about the rest of the band? There's a LOT more happening than just that little bit between 400 & 700nm. Very interestink!

Light doesn't have mass, as it is described by modern physics:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resourc ... onmass.htm

The phenomenon from the sun known as "solar wind" is not EM radiation, but rather the parts of the suns corona that are too hot and energetic for gravity to hold. These atoms blow off at a speed of around 400km/s, far slower than EM radiation. It really is a "wind" in the sense that they are actual particles blown off of the sun, with a composition of such gasses as helium, neon, and argon.

[ChrisA]

What was that about light not having mass?

When light is a particle, it is a massless particle (which some might argue isn't -really-
a particle at all, but such are the quandries of quantam physics...)

I can't remember the correct formulation of relativity off the top of my head, but it worked out such that for any non-zero mass, as the velocity approaches that of light, the multiplier of the mass approaches infinity. So, only something massless can travel at the speed of light without putting an undefined into the equation (which usually means 'this is impossible'.) Except where relativity may be overturned, light cannot have mass.

(I won't swear there are no bizarre quantum situations perhaps yet to be discovered that create execeptions, especially in the first second of the big bang or inside a black hole where everything goes nuts anyway...)

And I don't think that glasses are machines, nor is there anything mechanical about them other than the hinges on modern eyeglasses. Eyeglasses without hinges would be entirely non-mechanical.

[amar]

but how then does a black hole suck in light? and, anyway, what was before the big bang?

[jsluder]

and, anyway, what was before the big bang?

The big "Oops!"

[Wanderer]

but how then does a black hole suck in light? and, anyway, what was before the big bang?

Black holes don't...
The theory is that space/time warps around the black hole, and that light is following that crooked path in space/time--not that light is being directly affected by the gravity of the black hole itself.

[GaryKelly]

Ahl be bekk... wid trendy new machines to prodect my eyes from de sunn...

[Flyingcursor]

I say no.

Seeing, is passive so a lens doesn't help in the "act" of seeing since there's no act involved. Now if you had a means of changing the shape of a lens to change the diopters then "that" would be a machine.

You could say the fibres that connect to the lens of an eyeball form part of an organic machine.

Even a piece of plane glass will refract light and that wouldn't be considered a machine.

[jbarter]

How come nobody's discussing the politics of light?

[fearfaoin]

what was before the big bang?

"What does this button do?"

[jbarter]

what was before the big bang?

The big foreplay?