Tiniest Lamp Spans Quantum, Classical Physics 59
Urchin writes "Physicists in California have made the smallest ever incandescent lamp using a carbon nanotube as the filament. The nanotube is so small it behaves as a quantum mechanical system but it's just large enough that the classical physics rules of thermodynamics should apply. Analyzing the light emitted from the tiny light will give the team a better picture of what happens in the twilight zone between the quantum and classical worlds." The New Scientist article doesn't mention the researchers' surprise, as the abstract does: "Remarkably, the heat equation and Planck's law together give a precise, quantitative description of the light intensity as a function of input power, even though the nanotube's small size places it outside the thermodynamic limit."
Carbon nanotubes (Score:1, Funny)
Is there anything they *can't* do?!
California Environmental laws! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry - but they will have to switch it out for a really tiny compact fluorescent bulb.
How many physicists... (Score:5, Funny)
One. Two to do it, and one to renormalise the wave function.
Re:California Environmental laws! (Score:5, Funny)
Queue the "how many physicists does it take to change a nano lightbulb?" jokes...
Re:How many physicists... (Score:5, Funny)
Crud (Score:5, Funny)
I just replaced all the lamps in my house with these, but they just don't seem to brighten up the room like the old ones, and now my cat is missing.
The things we must endure for global warming to be a success.
Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Reading Beowulf under the light provided by a cluster of these lamps!
Re:An incandescent lamp??? Arrest them! (Score:3, Funny)
It gets even worse: they're using a CARBON filement! Carbon, people! It's worse than plutonium!
Re:How many physicists... (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as we observed it, it collapsed into a changed state. (Well, half the time. The other half it collapsed into an unchanged state.)
Furthermore, we had an additional problem... we made the mistake of measuring how fast we were moving the bulb. As soon as we did that, we lost track of where the damn thing was.
How many to replace (Score:3, Funny)
I expect a ticker-tape parade for our new hero, (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Very important kind of experimentation! (Score:3, Funny)
I think I'm required to tell you to "shut up and calculate".