Cecil,

With reference to question #2:

Who says such a silly thing? Not Melles-Griot, who appear to be your
favorite optical reference source. Not Born and Wolf in "Principles of
Optics", which is the ultimate optics reference book. Not any
professional optics experts I have ever encountered.

If you go ahead and solve the antireflective glass problem using
standard Maxwell's equations (sorry, Reg and Peter) with standard
boundary conditions for E and H fields you will find there is not the
slightest bit of confusion. This analysis is shown in many optics and
E&M textbooks.

In the perfectly antireflective case all of the waves keep moving in the
same direction, from air to thin film to glass. If one postulates the
existence of a wave in the reverse direction it will be discovered that
the amplitude of that wave is zero, meaning it does not exist. There is
no "bouncing back and forth" of confused energy not knowing where and
how to turn around.

The interference model is useful and intuitive for what it is meant to
explain. However, don't expect this sort of simple handwaving model to
be extendable to all sorts of silliness about energy and momentum transfer.

73,
Gene
W4SZ

Cecil Moore wrote:
Steve Nosko wrote:

you win. 73


It's not a contest, Steve, it is a search for the truth. I thought
maybe you could offer something compelling. The following two
questions are very similar:

1. How does RF power (joules/sec) rejected by the load wind up being
incident upon that same load some time later in a Z0-matched system?

2. How does irradiance (joules/sec) rejected by a pane of glass wind
up being incident upon that same glass pane some time later in a non-
glare air/thin-film/glass system?

Question #2 was answered decades ago by optics physicists. Question #1
still remains unanswered by RF physicists and engineers even though it
has virtually the same answer as Question #2.