Optical fiber by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
The Story of Light by Bell Labs (2015)
Source. Gives some ideas of the history of fiber optics. Features: Herwig Kogelnik.
Video 3. . Source. 2008 at MIT. Theory and demonstration.
It is so mind blowing that people believed in this theory. How can you think that, when you turn on a lamp and then you see? Obviously, the lamp must be emitting something!!!
Then comes along this epic 2002 paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12094435/ "Fundamentally misunderstanding visual perception. Adults' belief in visual emissions". TODO review methods...
Faster-than-light by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
One argument of why, is that if you could travel faster than light, then you could send a message to a point in Spacetime that is spacelike-separated from the present. But then since the target is spacelike separated, there exists a inertial frame of reference in which that event happens before the present, which would be hard to make sense of.
Even worse, it would be possible to travel back in time:
Sukhoy Nos is a cape located in the northeastern part of Lake Baikal in Russia. It is known for its picturesque landscapes and natural beauty. Sukhoy Nos is a popular spot for outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing, and photography, attracting nature enthusiasts and tourists. The area is part of the Baikal Nature Reserve, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is noted for its unique ecosystems and biodiversity.
Radio wave by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
This is likely the easiest one to produce as the frequencies are lower, which is why it was discovered first. TODO original setup.
Also because it is transparent to brick and glass, (though not metal) it becomes good for telecommunication.
Some notable subranges:
A fuzzy control system is a type of control system that uses fuzzy logic instead of traditional binary sets (true/false or 1/0) to make decisions or control processes. Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic that deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than fixed and exact. This makes it particularly useful for complex systems where uncertainty or imprecision is a factor.
Phenomena that produces photons in pairs as it passes through a certain type of crystal.
You can then detect one of the photons, and when you do you know that the other one is there as well and ready to be used. two photon interference experiment comes to mind, which is the basis of photonic quantum computer, where you need two photons to be produced at the exact same time to produce quantum entanglement.
Video 1.
One Photon In, TWO Photons Out by JQInews (2010)
Source.
Mentions that this phenomena is useful to determine the efficiency of a single photon detector, as you have the second photon of the pair as a control.
Also briefly describes how the input energy and momentum must balance out the output energy and momentum of the two photons coming out (determined by the output frequency and angle).
Shows the crystal close up of the crystal branded "Cleveland Crystals Inc.". Mentions that only one in a billion photon gets scattered.
Then shows their actual optical table setup, with two tunnels of adjustable angle to get photons with different properties.
Video 2.
How do you produce a single photon? by Physics World (2015)
Source.
Very short whiteboard video by Peter Mosley from the University of Bath, but it's worth it for newbs. Basically describes spontaneous parametric down-conversion.
One interesting thing he mentions is that you could get single photons by making your sunglasses thicker and thicker to reduce how many photons pass, but one big downside problem is that then you don't know when the photon is going to come through, that becomes essentially random, and then you can't use this technique if you need two photons at the same time, which is often the case, see also: two photon interference experiment.
Polarization of light by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
This section discusses the pre-photon understanding of the polarization of light. For the photon one see: photon polarization.
People were a bit confused when experiments started to show that light might be polarized. How could a wave that propages through a 3D homgenous material like luminiferous aether have polarization?? Light would presumably be understood to be analogous to a sound wave in 3D medium, which cannot have polarization. This was before Maxwell's equations, in the early 19th century, so there was no way to know.
Particularly cool is to see how Fresnel fully understood that light is somehow polarized, even though he did not know that it was made out of electromagnetism, clear indication of which only came with the Faraday effect in 1845.
spie.org/publications/fg05_p03_maluss_law:
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the only known way to generate polarized light was with a calcite crystal. In 1808, using a calcite crystal, Malus discovered that natural incident light became polarized when it was reflected by a glass surface, and that the light reflected close to an angle of incidence of 57° could be extinguished when viewed through the crystal. He then proposed that natural light consisted of the s- and p-polarizations, which were perpendicular to each other.
A critical system refers to a system that is essential for the functioning of a larger framework or operation, where failure or malfunction could result in significant consequences, such as safety hazards, financial loss, or disruption of services. Critical systems are commonly found in various domains, including: 1. **Safety-Critical Systems**: These are systems where a failure could lead directly to loss of life, significant property damage, or environmental harm.
"Barys" means "heavy" in Greek, because protons and neutrons was what made most of the mass of known ordinary matter, as opposed notably to electrons.
Baryons can be contrasted with:

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
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    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
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    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
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    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
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