The Electromagnetic Spectrum

www.facebook.com ... Science@NASA: EMS (Episode 1) - An Introduction To The Electromagnetic Spectrum --- Please SUBSCRIBE to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com --- Measuring the electromagnetic spectrum You actually know more about it than you may think! The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is just a name that scientists give a bunch of types of radiation when they want to talk about them as a group. Radiation is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes-- visible light that comes from a lamp in your house and radio waves that come from a radio station are two types of electromagnetic radiation. Other examples of EM radiation are microwaves, infrared and ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays. Hotter, more energetic objects and events create higher energy radiation than cool objects. Only extremely hot objects or particles moving at very high velocities can create high-energy radiation like X-rays and gamma-rays. The different types of radiation in the EM spectrum, in order from lowest energy to highest: Radio: Yes, this is the same kind of energy that radio stations emit into the air for your boom box to capture and turn into your favorite Mozart, Madonna, or Justin Timberlake tunes. But radio waves are also emitted by other things ... such as stars and gases in space. You may not be able to dance to what these objects emit, but you can use it to learn what they are made of. Microwaves: They will cook your popcorn in just a few ...

The story behind 'The Quest for the Higgs'. In 1999 my father Martinus Veltman won the Nobel Prize in physics and quite quickly it became apparent that I had no idea for what. In fact, it's fair to say that barely anyone today knows much about the present forefront of physics. This was not always the case. There was a great celebration and basic public understanding of physics in the early 20th century. The celebrity of Einstein and his theory relativity, the discoveries of the structure of the atom and of course the atomic bomb. The general public knew to some extent the idea of fusion, a nucleus surrounded by electrons, etc.. But since then, the last 60 plus years of discovery has gone into a realm of mystery. Quarks, Leptons, Higgs, Quantum Mechanics, Weak Force, Gauge Theory, and the list of mysterious terms goes on and on. However, my dad believed that we are at a point where the picture of particle physics has gotten quite clear and can be explained to the layman... me! We decided to make an educational film and the task of writing it fell upon me. What followed was two years of intense learning. Reading one layman book after another and asking my dad numerous questions. Of particular help was in fact my dad's book "Fact and Mysteries of Particle Physics." A complex book but it is all there without crazy mathematical formulas. The Eureka moment of how to explain Particle Physics came with the book QED by Richard Feynman. In the foreword he explains that he was asked ...