A Question About Different Waves, Gamma, microwave, radio etc.

We all Know the speed of light - 299 792 458 meters / second

All of these waves travel at the same speed as far as i know.

My question is If Gamma rays are much more Higher Frequency of wave to say a Radio wave, If i had Point A and sent both the same distance to Point B and both arrived at the same time as they should. Has not the Gamma Ray infact covered more distance because there will be much more waves inbetween Point A and Point B even though lenghth and time?

e.g. I have 1 meter to cover, my first line of wool has 5 waves and my second line of wool has 20 waves. If i pulled both wool lines straight the wool line with 20 waves would be longer.

Any Ideas and concepts welcome

a reply to: GallopingFish

yes but light is a wave and a particle(photon), which only displays particle like behaviors when measured.

a reply to: GallopingFish

The gamma ray wave travels as a whole at the speed of light. The length of the wave, no matter how long, or how short, travels at that speed. For something to travel the length of the gamma ray wave, then it is viewed as a greater distance to travel, but the wave as a whole travels the same distance. Or I may be wrong, because I know very little about waves zipping through space at light speed.

a reply to: GallopingFish

You're essentially talking about phase velocity.
en.m.wikipedia.org...
en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: th3dudeabides

So are you saying when we measure them they are appear the same. But if we don't measure them they are different?

Gamma is a name of a EM wave moving at a certain frequency, Radio waves a lower frequency.
Light is another EM frequency.

Im not to flash at trying to convey Thoughts...

Ok, imagine a Race with two people. 20m distance. One man has to run up and down around 5 cones. The other man up and down around 20 cones. Both Run and arrive at the finish line in exactly the same time. Who has covered more ground though?

a reply to: Boscov

That's correct. That's the difference between group velocity and phase velocity, essentially.

might help,

Every photon is a wave packet (lots of small waves wrapped inside a larger wave) with the distance between the small peaks related to that photon wavelength. The gamma ray is much shorter (less than a millimeter in length) than a radio wave (which can be hundreds of meters long). So the wave packet of a gamma ray is like a tightly coiled spring, while the radio wave is a long stretched out spring.

But both photons travel at the same speed and the two points are the same distance apart, so they arrive simultaneously. Otherwise, we would have all sorts of interesting consequences with Doppler shift or red shift from
distance objects.

a reply to: PrinceRupertsDog

Cheers!

So in a Way Gamma rays propogate at a faster rate through space. But don't move faster than lightspeed.

a reply to: stormcell

Ok Thanks i think i understand now. Its like Radio wave curves are higher than gamma waves which are closer in to a center line.

So even though Gamma has 20 waves they are smaller from top to bottom to 5 radio waves which is much more higher and lower in the curves top to bottom. Same length of wool different amount of waves. Boom.

Thanks

a reply to: GallopingFish

I think its more correct to say that in some cases, it appears that the phase velocity can exceed c, but the information contained in that wave cannot exceeded c. Do some Google searches on FTL and group velocity and phase velocity. I'm sure its explained better on the interwebs than I can.

On a related note, this is what happens when the phase velocity exceeds c in a medium, such as water.
en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: GallopingFish

The meter is the transportation device the wave is the passenger. Gamma gives you mores passengers in the transportation device than radio waves. They both arrive at the destination at the same time one just has more passengers.

originally posted by: GallopingFish
a reply to: stormcell

Ok Thanks i think i understand now. Its like Radio wave curves are higher than gamma waves which are closer in to a center line.

So even though Gamma has 20 waves they are smaller from top to bottom to 5 radio waves which is much more higher and lower in the curves top to bottom. Same length of wool different amount of waves. Boom.

Thanks

I think what you are describing is called the amplitude (intensity?) of the wave, how "high" or "low" the curves are. That's not related to the frequency which correlates to the energy level. Higher frequency waves are more energetic.

Frequency is just how many times it 'waves'/cycles per unit of time. Hertz is just the number of cycles per second.

Wavelength is just that, the length of one 'wave'/cycle.

At 1 Hz the wavelength is 299,792,458 m. If you know the frequency, you divide 299,792,458 m by the number of Hz to find the wavelength. If you know the wavelength, divide 299,792,458 by the wavelength to find the frequency.

originally posted by: GallopingFish
Ok, imagine a Race with two people. 20m distance. One man has to run up and down around 5 cones. The other man up and down around 20 cones. Both Run and arrive at the finish line in exactly the same time. Who has covered more ground though?

Using your running example, if two sprinters run at 10 metres per second, but one holds his arms straight down, and the other flaps like a bird, which runner was quickest? That fact that one moves his arms up and down doesn't change the velocity even though his arms are moving further - he's just using more energy.

originally posted by: GallopingFish
Ok, imagine a Race with two people. 20m distance. One man has to run up and down around 5 cones. The other man up and down around 20 cones. Both Run and arrive at the finish line in exactly the same time. Who has covered more ground though?

That method works for measuring the path traveled by a runner, but we don't measure the velocity of electromagnetic radiation that way. While I understand the analogy you're trying to make, the analogy of the runner doesn't hold true for EM waves. It doesn't even hold true for water waves. When you drop a pebble in a pond and circular waves propagate, nothing is really traveling along all the curves in the waves, the water molecules are basically just moving up and down as the wave passes by. We don't count that transverse motion in the velocity of water waves either.

originally posted by: PrinceRupertsDog
a reply to: GallopingFish

You're essentially talking about phase velocity.

The example he gave isn't really phase velocity.

Phase velocity is still in the direction of propagation.

He's talking about adding the motion perpendicular to the direction of propagation, called transverse.

originally posted by: th3dudeabides
a reply to: GallopingFish

yes but light is a wave and a particle(photon), which only displays particle like behaviors when measured.

This is what freaks me out the most when does a particle become a wave and how does measuring it make a difference. Are their different ways of measuring such things?

originally posted by: druid1
This is what freaks me out the most when does a particle become a wave and how does measuring it make a difference. Are their different ways of measuring such things?

I don't think of it as "becoming a wave".

Light is made of particles called photons which are pretty much always waves as they have a wavelength. So they are always the same thing as far as I know, they only exhibit different properties if you measure them differently.

Think of taking a picture of a person from the front and from the back. It's the same person, you are getting two different views of the person. He's not changing from a front to a back. This is a very crude analogy however and the Copenhagen interpretation is widely though not universally accepted so we aren't completely sure what the experiments really mean, but we are sure about the experimental results because they are repeatable, so just read about those, like the double slit experiment.

a reply to: GallopingFish

Well... it might be equal distance covered, in the sense that, the wave crest and trough might be greater in height then a high frequency wave, but maybe high frequency there are many 'kinks' or wavelengths so it adds up to being equal.

originally posted by: MarlinGrace
a reply to: GallopingFish

The meter is the transportation device the wave is the passenger. Gamma gives you mores passengers in the transportation device than radio waves. They both arrive at the destination at the same time one just has more passengers.

I thought that the distance would be a measurement. The wave itself is the vehicle for transportation and passengers?

I also don't fully understand the flapping arms terminology, kind of do. My running term used the track as distance and direction where the runners were the waves. If i ran dead strait moving my arms faster i would burn more energy doing the Gamma wave run, so is it that Gamma burns energy more or holds more energy?

So by reading the posts Amplitude increases or decreases the crest points in a wave. So If Gamma was 1030Hz and Radio 1030Hz...

Hertz is the frequency measurement. They still Travel the same length at the same time. But the Phase velocity of Gamma is greater than the Phase velocity of Radio. Then Gamma has touched more space than radio?

God its confusing sometimes lol.