On Aug 31, 3:36 pm, Richard Clark wrote:
On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:20:50 -0700, John Smith

wrote:
What do you think turns those vanes--if it
ain't the "mass" of photons striking the plates?

Hmm, dare anyone ask either of you for a simple computation to support
this notion of "mass?"

If Arthur is so wedded to a Newtonian universe, it should be a walk in
the apple orchard.

A very simple question of rotational kinematics:
How much power is required to accelerate
the 1 gram mass of the vanes
from 0cM/s to 1cM/s in 10s?

Extra credit:
How many photons does it take to do this?

Extra special, super duper credit:
What is the weight of one of those photons?

You can use your calculator to convert mass to slugs in an Earth
environment. Of course, this may be an egregious speculation of
ability if the prior compuations are begged (or whined) off with
extraneous demands (not worth Newton's spit) for parsing F=MA.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Uhhh, gawd, I hate to even get into THIS mess... But, somebody has
gotta do it...

First guys, photons hitting the blades of the radiometer do not turn
it by F=MA... If it did were we so lucky then NASA is wasting a
hell of a lot of money designing the mars rockets when all they have
to do is have the space shuttle throw out a sail and have their heads
snap back as they are accellerated like a half drunk blond hitting the
gas pedal in a red corvette...
Actually, the radiometer blades turn because infrared energy
differentially heats the black surface of the blade as opposed to the
silver surface, causing it to differentially heat the local air
molecules on that side of the blade as opposed to the silver side...
The more energetic bombardment of the black surace by the heated
molecules as opposed to the less energetic bombardment on the silver
surface causes a differential in pressure that pushes the blade on its
way...
(no Virginia, that is not a vacuum inside the radiometer, just high
altitude - and yes there is no Santa Claus - now come over here and
sit on my lap)

denny