Cecil Moore wrote:

Jim Kelley wrote:

Wave P1 contains 75 watts and Wave P2 contains 8.33 watts.
Without a source of constructive interference energy, they cannot
add up to 133.33 watts.


And obviously he still doesn't believe it, Gene.

I should have said Tom. If I were Cecil I'd have blamed the error on my
glasses or my advanced age. ;-)

You don't really support superposition of
powers and violations of conservation of energy, do you?.

Depending on how high you keep your squelch set, you should already
pretty well know what I think about those things.

You're at least partially right though. Power does not superpose
(because, for among other reasons, it doesn't move or propagate). The
point you continue to miss is that power does not interfere either. Nor
is it valid to take the square root of the product of two power numbers
and claim that it turns around miraculously and goes the other
direction. But that's what you've miguidedly presented to the readers
of World Radio as fact. The irradiance equations are nevertheless
correct because power goes as the square of the fields - which do of
course superpose and interfere. The equations accurately describe the
effect - the end result, the outcome, not necessarily the cause or the
mechanism by which the result is achieved.

Before we go any further (and it is my sincerest hope that we do not), I
agree with Melles-Griot, Born and Wolf, Hecht, Jackson, and the other
E&M and optics books. What I disagree with (and I'm sure given the
opportunity so would the above mentioned authors) is some of your
interpretation of the physical phenomenon they describe.

73, ac6xg