Photons

Questions

How big is a photon? Is it any function of the wavelength and amplitude?

How do we compute the amplitude of a transmitted radio wave? What is the relationship to transmission power?

A 1000 kilohertz radio signal has a wavelength of 982 feet, much larger than an electron. How does the wave interact with an electron?

Why is antenna length a function of wavelength? The usual picture with a vertical electirc field emanating from a vertical antenna suggests that the antenna controls the amplitude of the wave. But it doesn't; amplitude is a function of radiated power. Note that the antenna works by having an electric current. Therefore, the first thing generated is the magnetic wave, and that is orthogonal to the electric wave and the ground.

If photons travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, how can their energy be hν? If they have any energy at all, they cannot move at the speed of light.

How does a photon "decide" if it is magnetic or electric? How does it decide to repel or attract? Once it's made its decision, how does it get the job done?

How much energy is required to move an object with the mass of an electron for the distance of an orbital jump?

Radio waves propagate because the electric wave induces a magnetic wave and the magnetic wave induces an electric wave. So how does the combined waveform move only "outward?" Why aren't the induced waves induced in all directions from each point?

Speculation

Is it possible that what we think of as a photon is merely an artifact of the interaction of an E/M wave with an electron. Until they interact, there is nothing but waves in the electromagnetic fields.

There is no mathematical difference between the sum-of-histories quantum approach to computing a probable location density and an approach that treats photons as an interaction. The location of the interaction will be intertwined with the phase of the waves and inexactness of the location of the electron.

Web Links

http://www.crystalinks.com/photonbelt.html - good intro to the concept of a photon. Attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The "photon belt" is described briefly as a new age myth.

http://www.kiae.ru/rus/inf/new/new8.htm - an almost-laymans description of a variety of experiments to generate and detect photons. "According to lattice calculations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) it is predicted that, at sufficiently high density, there will be a transition from hadronic matter to a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons - a transition which in the early universe took place in the inverse direction some 10^-5 s after the Big Bang and which might still play a role today in the core of collapsing neutron stars."

http://www.mathpages.com/ - A large collection of essays on various mathematical topics. The one on "Reflections on Relativity" has some good material on photons.

http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/es151/prop_models/propagation.html - For a review of progagation of radio signals.

http://www.gravityandspace.com/lightemission/Electron_Photo.html - Some notes on masses and energies invovled in photon absorption/emission by electrons. He impiously or impishly concludes that electrons do not absorb or emit electrons.

http://www.joot.com/dave/writings/articles/entanglement/
This sketches entanglement, starting with wave concepts. However, at the end it has a description of an experiment that really shows entanglement happening: Two displays show interference patterns from each of a pair of entangled photons. When a polarizer is introduced before one display, the interference pattern vanishes in both. How does the second know that the polarizer has intervened in the first? However, the discussion is at such an overview level that I cannot tell exactly what is supposed to be happening.