On Feb 17, 12:26 pm, "Robert11" wrote:
Hello,

New at this.

I guess radio waves can go through wood just fine, as I can har signals from
my Discone that's in my attic.

But, there is, I imagine, some attenuation as a function of type, thickness
(of the wood) and the frequency involved.

Are there any good links explaining Attenuation as a function of frequency
for different materials, etc. ?

thanks,
Bob

The actual calculation for a practical situation isn't simple--or
perhaps I should say isn't easy for a human to do. It's the sort of
thing we'd most likely let a computer do these days. But you can at
least get an idea about what's going on. The characteristics of a
material that will interact with radio waves--electromagnetic
radiation--are its permeability, permittivity, and resistivity.
Permeability relates to magnetism, and for non-ferromagnetic
materials, you probably don't have to worry much about it. As a
start, you might have a look at Wikipedia for permittivity, or do a
google it. The Wikipedia article I found about it looked pretty
reasonable.

Yours is a good question. Some people make a career out of studying
that sort of thing and becoming experts in it. You'd probably need to
study "electricity and magnetism" up through a good understanding of
Maxwell's equations and then get into the details of the physical
properties of materials to thoroughly understand it. Even then,
there'd be lots of puzzles to figure out, if you wanted. In other
words, you can dive pretty deeply into it if you want. But you're
absolutely right, the properties change with frequency, and the
effects you'd see at different frequencies would be different even if
the properties were to stay the same.

Cheers,
Tom