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| Science & Technology |
| Kirchhoff's Law modified to account for photons! |
| 2010-05-14 |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #9 Hey, Grenter! UIUC, 1972! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2010-05-14 19:47 |
| #8 Thanks for owning up, Ptah. I was beginning to wonder! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2010-05-14 19:46 |
| #7 merely number of protons, its Urk. ELECTRONS. What excuse do I have? it's friday, and I am TIRED... |
| Posted by: Ptah 2010-05-14 18:40 |
| #6 Oh, THAT. Kirchoff's law is an electron conservation law for electric circuits. Because power is a function of current, and current is merely number of protons, its possible to use Kirchoff's law as a surrogate for computing the energy usage in a circuit. They were doing research on a three junction transistor that emits laser light, and their computer model results were not matching up with the experimental results, so they were looking for the discrepency. Well, photons are pure energy so the power loss on the circuit would be higher than predicted. They went back and modified the power computation to factor in the power loss through the laser light, and the models started matching reality. Someone page Dr. Mann: this is how computer models are SUPPOSED to be debugged! |
| Posted by: Ptah 2010-05-14 18:39 |
| #5 Just goes to show that good and creative thinking doesn't always require that a lot of money to be thrown at something. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-05-14 18:03 |
| #4 Good to see Dr. Holonyak still in the game, and my alma mater still contributing something even despite the state's woes. |
| Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats 2010-05-14 14:26 |
| #3 I understand it, they were looking at something akin to perpetual energy (And scratching their heads), Apparently more output than input, but after thorough examination it wasn't. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2010-05-14 12:31 |
| #2 Nope, no math. Just concepts in the form of words. Of course, once you learn to "read" math, it just looks like concepts that everyone can understand. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-05-14 12:00 |
| #1 If I open it...is there gonna be math? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-05-14 11:44 |