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Originally Posted by AnotherCat
which I can only interpret as meaning that there are different sorts of photons because their wave vectors differ according to their energy (you start talking about high energy microwave and gamma rays) and direction,
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You should have interpreted it to mean "
there are differences among photons." Difference enough to make the comment "photons are photons" utterly irrelevant when talking about lighting an object for viewing. That they may all be the same kind of particle or wave or field or whatever they actually are in some context is, again, irelevent to this discussion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherCat
This is getting off topic so apart from adding that I am amazed by the irrational non scientific gymnastics you are prepared to go through to defend E Ink and to try to prove that photons are not photons, I will leave it at that.
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I actually did check into the physics before I posted about that level, just to make sure there was discussion of differences in the literature, and indeed, photons can apparently be "distinguishable" for various purposes at that level. For example, if all photons were the same, there would no reason to specify "indistingushable" in experiments like:
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...ett.104.123605
But any how, I believe I made the point that that was not the practical level involved here. As the analogy with atomic particles was meant to illustrate, it's what you're doing with them that matters: quantity, direction, source, spectrum, etc. As a photographer, I don't need to address photons on the quantum level to manipulate the effect they have on what we see, and how it makes our eyes and brains feel.
Upshot: "photons are photons" is an utterly meaningless comment in this conversation.