On Jun 17, 7:00*pm, Keith Dysart wrote:
I will caution again, do not assign too much reality to these
forward and reflected waves; very useful for solving problems,
but trouble if carried too far.

I'm afraid you are too late with that advice. Optical physicists have
assigned reality to forward and reflected waves inside an
interferometer and have tracked all of the energy including the energy
in canceled wavefronts.

http://www.teachspin.com/instruments...eriments.shtml

Scroll down to, "Using Dielectric Beamsplitters to find the "missing
energy" in destructive interference" It says: "... when interference
is destructive at the standard output, it is constructive at the non-
standard output."

In RF terms, when interference is destructive at a Z0-match, it is
constructive in the direction of the load.
--
73, Cecil, w5dxp.com