[SI-LIST] : Interesting theoretical questions

About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: subas ([email protected])
Date: Mon Nov 01 1999 - 16:24:13 PST


Hi all,

I have some theoretical questions regarding high frequency signals:

1) What is the maximum frequency you can generate electronically by our
current technology (GaAs???)? Can we have an oscillator that can oscillate
in the frequency of the visible light, for example?

2) The way light gets reflected from a metal (silver in a mirror) is that it
first induces current (as a receiving antenna) and again radiates (as a
transmitting antenna) the EM wave instantly so that we get the impression
that the light is being reflected by the metal surface. Then how come
different metals can have different colors (gold - yellow) when we expect
them all to reflect light of all colors?

3) Has there been any computer made without any clocks (asynchronous)? How
fast is this computer?

4) Why is optical computing getting no where? Is this because lasers are
expensive? Or because of the lack of fast optical switch ( any non-linear
optical device)?

Thank you very much.

Subas

**** To unsubscribe from si-list: send e-mail to [email protected]. In the BODY of message put: UNSUBSCRIBE si-list, for more help, put HELP. si-list archives are accessible at http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu/si-list ****


About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 29 2000 - 11:39:30 PST