PHYSICS APPRECIATION: CHERENKOV RADIATION

PHYSICS APPRECIATION: CHERENKOV RADIATION

I'm a student, enthusiast and massive nerd, this is my best attempt at sharing all the awesome little secrets and tid bits, beyond your average high school science class. (It's cool I swear).

In a visit to Sizewell power station last year (highly reccomend), I learned that nuclear reactors don't glow the radioactive green we see in cartoons:

But rather a brilliant blue:

It's cause is simmilar to that of a sonic boom. Normally, matter can't accelerate past the speed of light, however, the speed of light in water, is much slower than the speed of light in a vacuum (around 75%). This means that, charged particles emitted during nuclear reactions, are able to exceed the speed of light in their medium (water), and things get weird.

Water is dielectric (able to be electrically polarised), so when charged paricles faster than the speed of light travel through it, its particles become polarised. In order to return to their ground state, the particles emit photons.

The photos travel as waves with high frequencies and short wavelengths (remember ROYGBIV?), which tend towards the blue/violet end of the visible light spectrum, hence the blue. (And perhaps even ultraviolet, which we can't see).

If anyone wants me to go more in depth, or if I've made any mistakes, please lmk!!

The Monster You Made

Since AM seems interested in using religious iconography, I wanted to do a saint inspired piece of him.

“and the universe said…”

...😔

If you’re a Non-Muslim and you see a Muslim praying in public, could you please not pass in front of them?

Go behind them, but not in front. 👍

maybe I should get into biochemistry, I've always been fascinated with natural chemcial processes in nature like poisons and bogs and other things like that, I even read books about those topics in junior high and loved them