On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:54:43 -0700, Jim Kelley
wrote:

So it is because of Newtonian mechanics that an RF power meter is
actually measuring power rather than indicating power. What is the
value gained by this strain on credulity?

Hi Jim,

Sounds like you should talk to your Chaplain about these issues.

I've often wondered how one might go about recognizing a
photo-electron out of a group of other, less prominent electrons? :-)

It is like complaining the Nobel winners are indistinguishable from
the crowd in the ceremonial hall.

Prominent is key, certainly. How many electrons can you motivate to
leap over the barrier of the work function of a metal? In Physics, a
simple population count would reveal the prominence. Tubes usually
have to boil them off incandescent filaments, or rip them out of their
matrix with 10's of kilovolts of nearby potential.

Hi All,

Let's examine those last two motivators. Photons hardly raise the
temperature of a metal vane to, what, 1000 degrees? And as for
kilovolts of excitation, how much potential is there in a photon?

Well, too often this group starves for information in response when I
toss these questions out - too technical for this forum of light
nappers I suppose. Too often, these threads turn into strings of
slaps at the snooze button (and "ether" has been the biggest snooze of
them all - self-fulfilling if one were to enlarge on the term's
rhetorical baggage).

Place a vane coated with sodium into an evacuated quartz tube.
Illuminate the sodium coated plate such that it absorbs one microwatt
per square meter. This is sufficient power to evoke the
photo-electric response (hopefully this is not too arcane a term). The
bulk of absorption will occur within a layer depth of 10 atoms.
Sodium, one atom thick, measures out to 10^19 atoms per square meter,
so we are absorbing the power throughout 10^20 atoms. Hence each atom
is illuminated with 10^-26 Watts OR 10^-7 eV/sec. (eV: electron Volt,
perhaps another prominence hard to embrace.)

The conundrum (sorry for hard words - but even those who use English
as a second language manage to cope) here is that to build a potential
to at least 1eV (and usually 3 to 5 times that for many metals) would
take nearly a year for a single electron to leap the Work Function
barrier. In reality, it occurs in less than a nanosecond.

It would be interesting to see Arthur's Newtonian math achieving a
10,000,000,000,000,000:1 leap of faith. False idolatry in place of
work is like putting a lottery ticket into the collection plate.

Strip away my stylistic excess and the facts fill maybe three
sentences. Still, I am four sentences ahead of the rest. ;-)

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC