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I like magnets — some [[ideas]]:
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Today (actually yesterday) I saw a great video on the [[principle of least action]] and it blew my mind a bit. It also introduced me to diffraction grating effects — which I had heard about but hadn’t grokked/seen demonstrated.
- The fact that angular momentum is quantized… wow. Also it introduced me to [[diffraction gratings]], which I had heard of only in passing.
- And angular momentum has the same unit as action: Joule-second.
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This all made me think also of…
- Could you use diffraction gratings at astronomic scales to see into the past? E.g. by making visible light from a star that has taken a longer (slower) path to get to us.
- The effect that makes lights ‘stretch out’ in one direction in some mediums, like water (think of night lights reflected on a lake) or… the effect that is apparent in my chrome kitchen countertop that is quite something and I sometimes call the [[rainbow folding]]). I’m unsure if these are really related but something about the discussion about the paths that light can take made me think of it.
- All in all I really enjoy thinking about [[physics]] as of late.
- -> [[Action principles]] and [[Lagrangian]] are both interesting over at Wikipedia.