The following of yours is very interesting, very descriptive and sounds
very scientific.

So now, the only question left, which seems implied by you, is, "Do I
get it?"

To which I reply, EUREKA! YES! Indeed, since we got rid of photons and
waves--we are only left with quanta! And, if we now construct a
"quanta-antenna", such as you imply, we can have a "160 meter earth
scorcher" the size of pin head which is just as an efficient radiator as
the MONSTER in my backyard!

Thanks for the explanation--I won't forget you for awhile! grin

Regards,
JS

K7ITM wrote:
On Aug 29, 5:35 pm, John Smith wrote:
K7ITM wrote:

...

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
If there are, indeed, as many photons being emitted by the thin edge of
the ribbon, as by the broad edges, what law/effect/affect is being
demonstrated here?

Or. why are the photons "drawn" to the thin edge with such magnitude of
force?

The 14MHz photons are being emitted by the whole antenna, not by
"broad edges" or "thin edges" as you suggest. You seem to be thinking
of them as little tiny balls, or some such. That mental image just
doesn't hold water. As I posted elsewhere in this thread, photons do
not behave like billiard balls. They don't behave like anything you
have encountered in the macro world we live in.

There are some decent "modern physics for the masses" books that will
explain to you some of the behaviour that you will probably think very
strange, if you are thinking in terms of how the macro particles
you're familiar with behave. Even particles like electrons, neutrons
and protons don't behave like large spheres. They have distinct "wave-
like" behaviour.

As a start, it would probably help if you dropped "wave" and
"photon" (particle) from your vocabulary when dealing with things like
this and realize that the antenna emits a stream of quantized energy,
with characteristics that can be described accurately without
resorting to "particles" or "waves". If you had no idea what a
passenger airplane was, but you were familiar with birds and busses,
would you get into a discussion about the new thing being a bird and
not a bus, or a bus and not a bird? Or would you realize that it has
some characteristics of each, but is neither, and deserves a
description all its own? Quantized radiation is rather like that.
You will NOT describe it accurately as either "waves" or
"particles" (in the macro sense).

Cheers,
Tom