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#1 2010-01-28 11:00:42

John E. Franklin
Member
Registered: 2005-08-29
Posts: 3,588

moving blurry light faster than actual movement!

I was sitting mostly in the dark eating some
Oriental soup, and looking out a sliding door,
where it was dark outside, with vertical tall
slim bird feeders hanging.  I saw a bright
light, I figured was one of the bird feeders.
The bright light was moving up and down
quite drastically as if there were a squirrel
on the deck on it or a harsh wind.  But to
my surprise, when I turned the bright light
onto the deck, I found out the bird feeder
was simply swinging forward and back
gently!!  Immediately I realized the light
bouncing off the vertical cylinder of a
birdfeeder was coming from a light by my
computer in the livingroom and the blurry
fast movement of light was nothing, nothing,
at all, really, just a reflection.  Reflections
can hence move faster than the objects they
come from, because they are not real, well,
perhaps, anyway, in a simple sense...


igloo myrtilles fourmis

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#2 2010-01-28 14:16:38

MathsIsFun
Administrator
Registered: 2005-01-21
Posts: 7,711

Re: moving blurry light faster than actual movement!

I believe this can result in "faster than light" effects.


"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman

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#3 2010-01-28 14:45:28

John E. Franklin
Member
Registered: 2005-08-29
Posts: 3,588

Re: moving blurry light faster than actual movement!

Another thing that bothers me is that you can see yourself in water or a mirror,
and I know for a fact the mirror and water are not perfectly flat.
There must be a lot of light going in the wrong direction, but most of it
goes in the right direction or something.  Seems like we would get
more distortion in the coloring of reflections on mirrors.


igloo myrtilles fourmis

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