Comments on: Move Over, Lasers: Masers Now Work at Room Temperature

By: Comms-Man

Comms-Man — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:10:22 +0000

Sorry Anthony, but you’ve made a mistake; the higher the frequency the smaller the wavelength when normalized for speed of propagation. This applies to many wave modeled phenomena including both light and sound waves.

The higher the frequency, the smaller the wavelength of waves at that frequency
The lower the frequency, the longer the wavelength of a given wave at that frequency

i.e. wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency

Microwaves are much lower in frequency than visible light (well below infrared light), therefore relative to visible light, they have a much longer wavelength (several orders of magnitude). Similarly, higher frequencies of electromagnetic radiation like x-rays and gamma-rays (which well above UV light) have much much higher frequencies than visible light and therefore have much much smaller wavelengths.

But don’t feel bad, it’s easy for people to get confused about these concepts if they’re new to them, or aren’t a 100% familiar with them.

By: Chance

Chance — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:57:30 +0000

You took a stab Anthony, but I’m guessing you didn’t google your thought before posting. I’m guilty of this quite a bit…googling takes way to long.

By: Geack

Geack — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:24:16 +0000

@6,
So can sunlight. Your point?

By: Geack

Geack — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:22:25 +0000

@5. Les,
This is a question about the definition of a word, not some existential debate on the possibility of knowing. If masers do somehow solve all our problems, it will be nice to understand what the heck everyone’s talking about.

By: proterozoic

proterozoic — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:28:42 +0000

Science’d by Sophie Bushwick.

On tonight’s program: Young man gets the electromagnetic spectrum backwards!

By: Nathanial

Nathanial — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:08:15 +0000

Microwaves can cause cancer.

By: Les

Les — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 02:24:59 +0000

Don’t worry, Anthony. We’re all in the hands of people who know a lot of things for sure. That’s why all the world’s problems have been solved.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:00:50 +0000

PWNED

By: Karl

Karl — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Yeah, Sophie is certainly correct. She’s from SciAm, by the way.

By: Sophie Bushwick

Sophie Bushwick — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:17:26 +0000

I think you might actually have that backwards. Visible light has wavelengths hundreds of nanometers long (100 nanometers = 1/10,000,000 of a meter), but microwaves have wavelengths at least a millimeter long (1 millimeter = 1/1000 of a meter).

For more, check out this handy infographic (courtesy of NASA http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/waves3.html) comparing the wavelengths of different types of electromagnetic radiation:
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/ems_length_final.gif