On Aug 30, 11:33 pm, Dave Oldridge
wrote:
K7ITM wrote roups.com:



On Aug 29, 4:11 pm, "Mike Kaliski" wrote:
"John Smith" wrote in message

...

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

John

Imagine your ribbon antena flattened to the thickness of a razor
blade. Instead of using RF, heat the antenna with a blow torch until
it becomes white hot.

It is only when looking at the exact edge of the antenna that any
appreciable drop in light out put will be noticed. At all broadside
angles an appreciable amount of light would be seen. The same effects
can be expected to occur at RF but the majority of amateur test
equipment would not have the resolution to measure the dip with the
antenna edge on. The width of the receiving antenna and diffraction
effects would tend to hide this in the far field, and alignment,
reflection effects and manufacturing tolerances in the near field.

Or perhaps more appropriately, with visible light being around 500
nanometers wavelength, imagine your antenna wire being about 0.01
nanometers thick and 1 nanometer wide (and 250 nanometers long, if you
wish) ... Now does you intuition tell you anything useful about the
angular distribution of emitted photons? I suppose not.

The real reason that photons are not a particularly useful concept in RF
design is that they are vanishingly small in energy, due to the rather
long wavelenths. I doubt if there is any equipment that would actually
intercept a MEASURABLE photon at most radio frequencies. You cannot
always say that of short-wavelength gamma rays or even light.

--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667

Yes, exactly. As I pointed out in another posting in this thread, for
14MHz electromagnetic radiation, it takes about 1e6 quanta per second
to equal the noise power in a one Hz bandwidth in a resistor at room
temperature. I suppose it could be open to discussion exactly _what_
the low energy per quantum is due to. That might be more interesting
than a lot else that's gone on in this thread, so far.