Science Squabbling

Because the same stubborness that will see me end in an alcoholic stupor is useful when it comes to pushing my lard arse along a road.

All high output exercise is destructive in some degree - but there is 150-200% more of Hippy than there is a typical human, so he can take the destruction for far, far longer.

I had a thought in the shower earlier... It's bugging me...

If matter is mostly empty space, why can't photons/visible light frequencies pass through it?

Apolz if a stupid question, Google has yielded very little in the way of an answer...

Because SCIENCE.

^That.

Can't believe you didn't know that.

Never mind, I get it now...

Well, I always got it but I'd never asked myself the question before...

Probably something to do with the wavelength of the light being larger than the gaps in the matter. Or because although it is empty the gaps are between the centre of an atom and the electrons interacting with it,and although they are wizzing around it they still act as one larger thing for some interactions.

If you know what I mean...

Light / energy / matter can act as particles and as waves - At difference energies, there are different levels of interaction.

Visible light (in the 400 - 700 nm range) will bounce of / be absorbed by matter, like a wave hitting a wall.

Smaller wavelengths (x-rays, for example, at 0.1 to 10 nm) may pass through.

String theory makes it even more complicated though, as does quantum mechanics, and the fact that matter is not empty space - atoms are not quite the mini solar systems that we know from school, but bundled up energy probability densities.

Probably more the first one, a lot of stuff passes though matter but xrays etc. have shorter wavelengths.

That^^.

I must've woken up in a particularly particular mood...

Of course, everyone knows 'particles' don't really exist...

Slow day at the ranch, a morning spent in the launderette has left me a bit bewildered...

A better question is why does light pass through air and glass but not through brick and stone?

To 'stop' or block light you need it to interact and be reflected or scattered or absorbed. For any those processes to take place there must an interaction of the correct energy , ie similar, for the photon. So in brick and stone there are processes that can absorb the photons and in air/glass there aren't many absorption opportunities.

What is fire? As in the actual flame. I can understand extreme heating and fast energy release means loss of energy through light and heat and their relationship. But an actual flame, what is it made of? Why does combustion need a spark? isn't heat and oxygen enough?

Science.

Something about bridging an energy gap, is that a thing?

photons and shit? Tell me now!

^I meant plasma

LED HD TV. Science.

It'll be made of whatever gasses it's burning, which in their excited, combusting states are letting of heat and light of whatever colour they let off when burned. I'd say that's why different gasses burn in different colours.

A flame is mild plasma, or gas so hot it is glowing. The colours indeed come from recombining electrons and ions. Differently energetic recombinations lead to different colours.

Not sure how burning solid fuels changes it's colour, does burning them release particles of it as a gas or vapour or something? Last science I did was GCSE about 15 years ago.

Burning wood releases heat into the gas (air) above it. Heat air up and it glows orangey red. The wood will also release gases, but you'd have to ask a chemist about that.