Since you already know about Fourier transforms, it's easier to explain. The Fourier transform of a monochromatic (single wavelength) source is a function that is constant in time. But no realistic phenomenon in nature is infinitely-long-lived. So it's not only common for realistic wave forms to be composed of many wavelengths, it's the case for every naturally occurring source.

The longest wavelength photons have less energy per photon. Radio signals have an extremely large number of photons, they are not large photons.

Any wave other than the sinusoidal wave is a combination of photons (unless they are bound, then the wavefunction of each photon is not a sinusoidal). We can do complicated waves in any wavelength we can produce large amount of photons on command, so from radio to X.

All photons combine their wave function to form a more complicated wave. They are still linearly independent and act as independent photons. The combination happens only if you check the wave which is the sum of the wave function of each photon.

> I've always imagined radio signals as enormous photons

No bigger or smaller than other photons, just a different color.. infra-infra-infra-red.

> and we can generate very complicated wave forms with radio.

Whoa hoss. We can generate very complicated AUDIO waveforms superimposed on a carrier of radio but the CARRIER remains a sine wave and varies its amplitude (AM) or frequency (FM) in synch with the AUDIO waveform it encodes.

Since there are blue photons (400 nm) and red photons (700 nm) we can combine them but they still behave like two different photons and stimulate two different photopigments inside the eye.

> So can we form complex wave form light?

No. I don't think photons interact that way, creating the harmonics that distinguish a flute tone from an oboe. IF they did, it would be in the [Edit:] ultraviolet range

> Are there natural phenomenon which produce odd looking wave forms?

Photons are wavicles and appear to contain only one wavelength.

> Does a refraction grating separate out different wavelength photons,

*diffraction Yes, unavoidably because each color diffracts to a different degree. So the grating pattern gets lost. To get a useful grating patterns you need monochromatic light.

[removed]

Good question. Radiopharmaceuticals like this one is produced at the hospital by use of a “cold kit” which is then tested and released for use shortly before the patient is injected and scanned. Page 3-5 in this https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/trs466_web.pdf explains it well.

[removed]

[removed]

If you had water that was for example at 105C, you're stating it would stay at 105C as it boils? And that the boiling would not lead to a decrease in the temperature?

You said it yourself in your first reply - it makes the ice melt earlier. The relevant concept is Gibbs free energy, where endo/exothermic is only part of the equation.

The only reason ice melts at 0 degrees in pure water is that that's the point where the gain in entropy from turning into a liquid balances out the increase in potential energy from turning into a liquid.

When you add salt to the water, you change the entropy part, making it more entropic to melt, which decreases the equilibrium temperature at which ice turns into water. The ice will melt faster when surrounded by salt, absorbing energy (and quite a bit of it! 334 J/g) until it hits the new depressed equilibrium temperature. Then it'll maintain that temperature by melting slowly, just like ice in pure water.

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

Happy to help friend. Agreed, I love these sorts of questions. They're like logic puzzles, but figuring out the answer usually involves learning something more broadly interesting than "ah, it's that particular sequence of steps to solve it".

XKCD's What If? Articles and books are fantastic for this, if you aren't already aware of them. There's about 160 of em on his site, currently.

The way I look at it which is kinda overly simple is you are creating a ripple in the medium you are pushing or pulling and that ripple is moving at the speed of sound for whatever the medium is made of.

Big enough objects over large enough space/time act much like liquids do, both with movement acting like a fast moving ripple and the natural slow movement/flow( takes thousands to many millions of years slow) on its own driven by its own gravity I believe like the Earth's deep layers.

[removed]

[removed]

This is the right answer, I would also suggest u/Unnombrepls watch this video on the speed of motion by AlphaPhoenix since I always wondered the same thing about transmitting data faster than light by moving a long cylinder between two points. I knew it would be impossible, I just didn't know why it would fail (ignoring the engineering problem with creating a long enough cylinder to test this.)

that's what I was picturing, I understood absolute zero to be where molecular movement stopped attaining supernatural rigidity. The last time I thought about it was highschool physics, so a very simple comprehension of the science as a whole. Interesting to think about tho, thanks for the reply.

I am extraordinarily skeptical that the temperature will actually decrease if all of the components are already at 0 C.

That's true for an ideal "rigid" stick/body, which is just a body for which shocks transfer instantaneously. Reality is that no body is perfectly rigid, obviously, and the shocks propagate depends on th density of the object. Hit a long stick on one side and feel the hit with a delay.

OPs question becomes even more interesting if you start making assumptions about the stick being super light, so really low density, so a normal human could potentially move it. Haven't figured out the answer, a convincing one, though.

Absolute zero just means there's absolutely no heat energy in the material; getting near that can cause weird things to happen in some materials, but it doesn't mean the entire object goes supernaturally rigid. (I think that's sorta what you were picturing, anyway.) Inertia and mass and such aren't changing. Causality too, given we're talking about moving light-years-long sticks instantaneously.

No because the energy of you pushing of the stick is still transmitted as an energy wave as described above regardless of the current state of the atoms in the stick. By adding energy with the push, the atoms of the stick will no longer be at absolute zero.

This is a fantastic explanation. I was thinking it would all move together and was trying to figure out how a light years long stick would react. I was thinking that the whole thing would move at once and therefore information would travel faster than the speed of light.

[removed]