Recent content by peter.ell

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    How Do Image Sensors Produce Accurate Colors?

    I'm really curious as to how it's possible for image sensors to capture scenes that look so accurate. The tiny color filters placed over the photosites are dye-based and due to that and their thinness I assume this means that a green filter must let in quite a bit of red and blue light which...
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    Does Energy Redistribution in Wave Interference Happen Superluminally?

    Because energy cannot be destroyed, when waves interfere destructively the energy doesn't really disappear, it's simply redistributed to areas of constructive interference, right? But isn't this energy redistribution instantaneous?
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    How Is Image Dithering Computed?

    Thank you. I appreciate your answer, it was very helpful. All the best!
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    How Is Image Dithering Computed?

    After reading about how dithering works for created the sense of a larger range of colors from a small color palette, it makes sense how it works, but how in the world do computers figure out how to dither an image so that it looks correct to us? Is the fact that blue and red combined create...
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    What Happens to the Photons in Destructive Interference?

    I know about the law of conservation of energy, and I understand interference effects conceptually, but when I put the two together I'm a little confused. I know that the energy of light must simply by transformed in destructive interference...but where does it go and how? If the...
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    Why is Glass Opaque to IR and UV, But Not Visible Light?

    It's actually because glass is transparent to visible light, which is absorbed by the materials inside your car and then that light is re-radiated at a longer wavelength--IR. This IR is then trapped inside of the car because the glass windows keep it in.
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    Why is Glass Opaque to IR and UV, But Not Visible Light?

    According to my understand of what makes something transparent, it's because a given wavelength of light doesn't have sufficient energy to raise the electrons in a material to a higher energy level, so the photons are not absorbed and continue on. This explains why glass is transparent for...
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    Diffraction Through a Sub-Wavelength Sized Slit?

    I was wondering what occurs when light encounters a slit that happens to be smaller than the wavelength of light that's trying to go through it. Does it just reflect back, does part of it go through thereby making the light have a shorter wavelength that matches the slit, what actually...
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    Parallax and Perspective Explained

    I completely understand the effects of parallax as well as perspective...intuitively; but I can't seem to explain them to a particularly inquisitive child I'm tutoring. He wants to know, in conceptual terms, why objects in the distance like the moon seem to move in the same direction as you...
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    Do Light Waves Have Amplitude?

    Thank you all for the great, helpful answers. You're right, I've never taken a class in quantum physics, but I'd love to. In the mean time, let me just see if I understand all of this: Light acts as both a particle and a wave, but a single light wave is not the same as a single photon. A...
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    Quick Question About Circuit Boards

    I am very curious as to why the etched lines running between components on a printed circuit board run the indirect paths they do. Looking at one now, I notice that many of the etched lines connecting components make all sorts of turns as if they were navigating around something...but nothing...
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    How Do Microprocessors Process?

    I am just curious how a microprocessor is able to actually process data. A serious of voltage variations corresponding to bits flows into it, but how does the inanimate slab of etched silicon "know" how to act on it and what to do with it? I am just in awe that computers can even work at all...
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    Why Is the Angle of Incidence Crucial in Understanding Light Refraction?

    I am a very conceptual kind of person and I'm trying to understand refraction, but after all my reading I'm still having some fundamental gaps that are preventing me from fully grasping it. (All of these questions are especially pertaining to how light waves refract.) Here's what I don't...
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    Do Light Waves Have Amplitude?

    Waves in general have three properties: frequency (related to wavelength), amplitude, and speed. When referring to light as a wave, it's wavelength and speed are always referenced but never its amplitude, and I was wondering if light has a fixed amplitude for all wavelengths or if it changes...
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    Using Light to Make Processors with Features Smaller than It's Wavelength?

    I've been reading up on photolithography trying to understand how processors with sub-wavelength features can be made through photolithography, but I just don't get it. Can someone please help me by explaining in a conceptual way how light with a wavelength of, say, 200nm can be used to make...
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