Cecil Moore wrote:
Gene Fuller wrote:
I looked at that web page, and my reaction was merely, "so what"?
There is nothing in there that is not well known to everyone who has
ever used or studied interferometry.

That's what I have been telling you guys for years. Everything
we need to know about RF waves has already been discovered
centuries ago by optical physicists. I used those centuries
old laws of physics in my energy analysis article which produces
voltage and current results identical to any conventional analysis.

http://www.w5dxp.com/energy.htm

You will come to understand that your concerns about "wave
cancellation" and related stuff at interfaces are not only
unimportant, ...

This is so typical of gurus on this newsgroup. When they lose
the argument, they invariably say it was not important to
begin with.

1. Nice job of selective quoting to completely change the meaning of a
message. Is that sort of like a line item veto?

2. As for the wave cancellation part, you have many times noted that
stuff happens at interfaces or discontinuities. So why is it that you
never ever consider what is happening inside those interfaces and
discontinuities? Do you suppose the waves simply cancel, reflect, or
whatever without assistance from the materials in the interface or
discontinuity? Do you suppose that any energy or momentum considerations
may need to include the materials?

This is akin to the concept of Thevenin equivalents. The view from the
outside is correct and useful. There is no information about what is
actually happening on the inside of the Thevenin box. In the same way
the wave reflection model as seen from outside the interface or
discontinuity works just fine. There is virtually no disagreement about
what one would observe if correct measurements were done. On the other
hand there is no possibility of figuring out how the waves actually
"cancel" or what happens to the energy and momentum without considering
the actual physical configuration. That sort of analysis has been done,
of course. It gets into all sorts of details on electrons and Fermi
surfaces, but strangely enough, it does not require Java applets on web
pages.

Unless you want to look at the interactions of waves with materials in
some detail, the concern about exactly what happens during a
"reflection" is unimportant. The external equations work just fine.

73,
Gene
W4SZ