On Aug 29, 12:53 pm, John Smith wrote:
Ok. You might ask me, "Why do you laugh at people discussing antennas
emitting photons?

And, I would answer:

Photon emissions from an antenna element(s) seems difficult, at best, to
visualize (no pun intended.)

Consider a 1/2 inch dia. single element antenna (monopole?) If the
thing is emitting photons, one would think the photons are being emitted
equally around the elements circumference.

Well, now flatten that 1/2 dia rod into a very thin ribbon--however, the
ribbon still has the same area of cross section, and equal to the cross
section of the round rod. If this conductor is emitting photons, one
would expect them, now, to be off the two flat sides of the element and
relative few off the sides--indeed, one would now expect this element to
be becoming directional in two favored directions--off the flat sides
... to date, I have NOT been able to measure an acceptable difference to
reinforce the "illumination properties" of the element.

The photon/wave properties of rf still remains a mystery ... and proof
hard to come by.

Regards,
JS

You'd have just as much trouble understanding the behaviour of visible-
light photons, given your desire to view them, apparently, as you
would billiard balls or some other macro-size physical object. You
might enjoy reading how Feynmann described the behaviour in his
physics lectures at Cal Tech. It's something along the lines of,
"They behave differently than anything you have any experience with.
Much differently."

On the other hand, there's probably not much utility in discussing
photons of, say, a 14MHz signal, simply because the energy contained
in one quantum at that frequency is so small that you won't be able to
detect it: a little less than 10^-26 joules per photon. At one
photon per second, that's under 10^-26 watts, if you collect all the
energy. At 50 ohms, that's less than a picovolt. Noise in a 1Hz
bandwidth in a 50 ohm resistor at room temperature is about a
thousand times that much. -- Yes, the energy is quantized. But the
quanta are going to be _very_ difficult to distinguish.

Cheers,
Tom