Making Waves
I've been thinking about colors.
Fun fact: the colors lie on what is called the electromagnetic spectrum. The extent to which we know this spectrum is tremendous! In other words, we see just a tiny sliver.
Check, check, check it out:
Visible light has wavelengths of 380 to 700 nanometers.
Gamma ray wavelengths are smaller than .01 nanometers (and nanometers are already flipping small).
Radio wavelengths reach as long as 100,000,000,000,000 nanometers!
Notice I'm using nanometers. 100,000,000,000,000 nanometers is just 100 kilometers: the distance of a few hours of driving. But I wanted to relate it to what we see.
We see this little shred: 380 to 700 nm.
Imagine if we could see more! I've been imagining it. The first thought is that we'd be like super-vision cyborgs or something: seeing through walls, seeing movement, seeing heat, seeing radio waves. The next thought is that our vision would be clogged! If you could see radio waves, your view would be eternally splattered with messages coming in and out. Your phone would be a jellyfish mass of information streaming out. You'd see threads and strings coming into your computers and televisions.
And that's just radio waves! If you could see infrared — heat — people would be varying masses of warmth. Cold people would look about the same, but hot people would be small clouds. The smaller wavelength rays are less abundant, but, if we could see them, getting an x-ray done would be a weird experience. We'd be able to see radioactive stuff.
Imagine if we could see more.
Fun fact: the colors lie on what is called the electromagnetic spectrum. The extent to which we know this spectrum is tremendous! In other words, we see just a tiny sliver.
Check, check, check it out:
Visible light has wavelengths of 380 to 700 nanometers.
Gamma ray wavelengths are smaller than .01 nanometers (and nanometers are already flipping small).
Radio wavelengths reach as long as 100,000,000,000,000 nanometers!
Notice I'm using nanometers. 100,000,000,000,000 nanometers is just 100 kilometers: the distance of a few hours of driving. But I wanted to relate it to what we see.
We see this little shred: 380 to 700 nm.
Imagine if we could see more! I've been imagining it. The first thought is that we'd be like super-vision cyborgs or something: seeing through walls, seeing movement, seeing heat, seeing radio waves. The next thought is that our vision would be clogged! If you could see radio waves, your view would be eternally splattered with messages coming in and out. Your phone would be a jellyfish mass of information streaming out. You'd see threads and strings coming into your computers and televisions.
And that's just radio waves! If you could see infrared — heat — people would be varying masses of warmth. Cold people would look about the same, but hot people would be small clouds. The smaller wavelength rays are less abundant, but, if we could see them, getting an x-ray done would be a weird experience. We'd be able to see radioactive stuff.
Imagine if we could see more.
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