[athribiristan]

Originally Posted by Kepler

Of course "energy is energy" (just like cars are cars, dogs are dogs and "arbitrary noun" is an "arbitrary noun"). That doesn't mean that there aren't different kinds of energy. A water wave carries energy mechanically through the motion of water molecules. An EM wave carries energy in the oscillations of its electric and magnetic fields. Anyway, I'm thinking again, and I still can't figure out how a water wave interferes with an EM wave.

Ok, sorry it took so long to get back about this. I had to think for a while about how best to explain it. We'll use the visible light spectrum for this example because we have all had this experience, or at least most of us. Imagine you are under water looking up at the surface. You can easily see that the water diffuses the light waves coming from above. Now imagine a wave moving across the surface of the water. You would see that the light is diffused/refracted differently depending on where it strikes the water, or where the two waves intersect.....interference.

Why? EM waves can have a wavelength spanning from, for example, miles to nanometers. Surely the wavelength of a water wave falls in that range.



How do you know it's not the other way around? How do you know that firing neurons don't cause thought?



Is a computer aware?


Thanks for the good discussion, everyone.

hope that helps