I thought that it would become polarized perpendicular to its incidence polarization. So what you're saying is that the reflected light is simply polarized 90° relative to the plane of incidence?
Homework Statement
Light polarised at 45° to the plane of incidence is incident on a smooth dielectric surface at
the Brewster angle. State the polarisation of the reflected beam (relative to the plane of
incidence).
Homework Equations
Brewster Angle -
tan θ = n2/n1
The Attempt...
I've been searching for nuclear fission chain reactions to see any similar mathematics. But I don't see how I could apply this to the colonization case. I should be able to modify the function I created in wolfram but I just don't see how. Instead of the probability of finding an uncolonized...
I assumed that there are 1e9 stars in the milky way and that each had one colonizable star. I also assumed that the travel time and the time taken to colonize a planet was 30,000 years. Giving me an answer for one ark colonizing the galaxy of 1e13. Which seems like a sufficiently large number...
What I managed to do in the end was this: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+from+n%3D1+to+1e9+of+%2830000*%281e9-n%29%2F%281e9-1%29%29
Is this correct? I'm actually trying to do this in python now and struggling to recreate that as code. Although I have created random walk programs in...
Homework Statement
Calculate the time taken to colonize the galaxy using an interstellar ark, making very rough approximations and broad assumptions. There are two rules:
1) The propulsion system must be something that already exists, no warp drives etc
2) Once the ark reaches a planet, the...
I'm sorry but the concept still isn't clear to me. Whichever way I try to define the number of possible states I have to use the term N. What am I missing?
Thanks again for the help :)
Thank you so much for the reply. That's made it much clearer.
So part a is simply:
m_s = n(1/2) + (N-n)(-1/2)
m_s = n/2 - (1/2)(N-n)
m_s = (1/2)(2n-N)
I'm having a bit of trouble getting part b as a function of n. Because isn't the number of states simply (number of up + number of down)^N...
Homework Statement
Homework Equations
The Attempt at a Solution
To be honest I'm clueless. I've missed a large amount of the course and just struggling to find any sources that explain this. I don't want the answer to the question, I want to figure that out for myself. What I really need is...