For everyone feeling stupid today
2006-Mar-30, Thursday 17:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
This is a story my father told me a few months ago. Before I begin, here's an article on Skin Depth. It's very, very short, but helps explain the story.
He was doing an experiment with a group of other physicists involving detecting a stream of particles shot into a sphere-shaped room. They were looking for interactions between the particle beam and the sphere...but they got nothing. After a couple tries, they sent someone into the room with a flashlight to see if there was a hole in the sphere while the others waited outside and watched the spot of light on the sphere's surface from the person inside looking around.
It took about five minutes before one of these Ph. D-educated particle physicists said, "Skin depth."
If the sphere let visible light through, it'd be effectively air to the particle stream.
He was doing an experiment with a group of other physicists involving detecting a stream of particles shot into a sphere-shaped room. They were looking for interactions between the particle beam and the sphere...but they got nothing. After a couple tries, they sent someone into the room with a flashlight to see if there was a hole in the sphere while the others waited outside and watched the spot of light on the sphere's surface from the person inside looking around.
It took about five minutes before one of these Ph. D-educated particle physicists said, "Skin depth."
If the sphere let visible light through, it'd be effectively air to the particle stream.
