Gene Fuller wrote:
I do not have a copy of Hecht, but I doubt that he has made any serious
mistakes.

It would be worth your while to visit a local university and
check out Hecht's chapters on superposition and interference.

"The reflected intensity plus the transmitted intensity is equal to the
incident intensity. Energy is conserved." I suspect Hecht provides
exactly that sort of description.

Much more than that. As you know, irradiance is power/unit-area
and Hecht spends many pages on irradiance and energy.

I believe you are reading too much into something Hecht is saying,
perhaps in an effort to somehow reconcile conservation of energy.

Spoken by someone who hasn't even read Hecht? I suspect if you
read Hecht, you would perceive the same information as I. Hecht
is big on conservation of energy and spends many pages discussing
such things involving EM waves.

The beauty of the laws of E&M, as expressed by Maxwell's equations and
other fundamental properties, is that conservation of energy is
automatic, at least in ordinary circumstances.

There is still an underlying Q&A about what happens to the energy
in those waves. The energy concept is in addition to what's already
there, not any kind of replacement for it.

The bottom line is that there are a number of tools available to develop
correct solutions to physical problems. Steve Best chose one path, and
you choose another.

Nope, we chose the same path. Steve just fell off the path and
down the cliff about 2/3 of the way through his articles. Steve
gave us a very good picture of what happens to the energy toward
the load but he gave us a distorted view of what happens to the
energy toward the source. Instead of Steve's one-sided approach,
I presented both sides thus merely expanding what Steve had
already done.

Don't limit your toolbox.

Funny, just above you seemed to recommend limiting the toolbox
to Maxwell's equations and tried to discourage me from thinking
about energy.
--
73, Cecil, http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp