Speed of Light Dielectric

I was watching a YouTube video 1. The video was about the speed of light in a medium, and I thought it would be interesting to do some relaxing programming with Julia. Specifically, I would like to simulate some light propagating through media with varying dielectric properties. This post will follow these steps: Derive the equations from Maxwell’s equations in a dielectric. Simulate the wave equations. Explore! From Maxwell’s Equations Here are Maxwell’s equations as known in a dielectric in general3....

January 28, 2024 · 8 min · Markus A.G. Amano

Odds to Pass: Passing Multiple Choice Quizzes with Luck Alone

Tests are one of those necessary evils in the world. A good test does what the name implies, it tests the knowledge of the person. Usually this is down to asses progress in a class or for self learning. Though sometimes this could go wrong (or right, keep reading). For essay and long form questions, there is a spectrum of right or wrong. In math and physics and science in general, the dreaded word problem can present many logical traps and common misconception traps....

January 10, 2024 · 7 min · Markus A.G. Amano

Knowing the Two-Way Speed of Light Does Not Matter

Enlightenment Two videos came out (Veritasium, Dialect) about measuring the one-way speed of light. Both are the usual fare for science videos, though Dialect is on the spicy side. For a bit of primer, the one-way speed of light is the distance traveled per time taken between two points. The two-way speed of light is the round trip distance traveled per time taken between two points. The aforementioned videos claim we cannot actually measure the one-way speed of light....

December 2, 2023 · 3 min · Markus A.G. Amano

Quantum Shoots and Ladders

Shoots (Snakes) and Ladders Shoots and ladders is the classic game for kids 1. The rules are simple. Each player starts with their pieces starting at the start of the board. For each player’s turn, they role a six diced dice where the rolled number is the number of spaces to move forward. To win, you must be the first player to reach the end of the board. For simplicity, we will consider reaching the end as rolling enough to move past the last position....

November 17, 2023 · 12 min · Markus A.G. Amano

Universal Number

The Universal Number (As of current knowledge) every possibly measurable quantity can be represented with $10^{134}$ bytes (or bits). Why? First, I would like to make some assumptions! Let’s same you make a measurement to distinguish the physical states of the world. For example, a potato could of many lengths! We use rulers to distinguish which universe1 we are in such that the potato is so long. Effectively, the smallest length increment is the Planck length....

November 14, 2023 · 2 min · Markus A.G. Amano

How does it rain on black holes?

From the perspective of a raindrop, how would it “percive” falling into a black hole? For super large/massive black holes, it’s said that there is “no drama”. The raindrop should experience it’s surroundings as if it was in empty space. The fact is, even though the black hole is warping space, it’s a vaccuum solution to Einstein’s field equations. Let’s lay some ground rules for what we mean by a raindrop....

July 19, 2023 · 5 min · Markus A.G. Amano

About Scales

I was watching a Veritasium video. It was about the misconception of energy flow in electricity. The main take away was that energy flows fields. Classically, this is the Poynting vector. The energy and all that is important in electro-magnetism is through the electro-magnetic fields. Clearly, in the video, Dereck, demostrates that the the light is turned on wirelessly. The initial turn of the switch causes a change in the electro-magnetic field in which propogates the energy to light, causing it to “turn on” 1....

May 3, 2023 · 3 min · Markus A.G. Amano

Do shells have equations?

Shells Notebook

July 19, 2021 · 1 min · Markus A.G. Amano