Timeline for Can two spectral lines from different elements be equal?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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Sep 6, 2017 at 12:08 | vote | accept | Spade | ||
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:33 | comment | added | Spade | Granted my second question might be "practically" unanswerable if I require infinite precision but it could still be "theoretically" answerable. I mean if you read @emilio-pisantys answer below it basically answers all my questions perfectly. I'm (obviously?) just a random person on the internet with an interest in physics and not a fancy double physics master like yourself so I'll apologise for my less then satisfactory use of proper terminology :P I hope we can agree to disagree but from "down here" my question and the given answer are still interesting :) | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:20 | comment | added | sammy gerbil | If you reject two things being equal when they are arbitrarily close, then you are rejecting measurement as a method of deciding if two things are equal. This would make your 2nd question unanswerable, because we cannot measure anything with infinite precision. We cannot tell the difference between two lines which are theoretically identical and two which are only too close for us to distinguish the difference. | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:07 | comment | added | Spade | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:05 | comment | added | Spade | Welll... mathematical equivalence? This was more a theoretical question than a practical one. I grant you that your page answers the practical side of the question. Maybe my question wasn't super clear that I was interested in if it was theoretically possible. | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:04 | comment | added | sammy gerbil | To what level of accuracy? To infinite precision? | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:03 | comment | added | Spade | @sammygerbil The only thing shown on that page is pretty pictures which seems to have lines that match up but for all I know one line is 653.54 nm and another 653.55 nm. On the scale there they look the same but they might be different. My question was if is possible (or rather theoretically allowed) for two elements to have the same spectral line. Not one that is arbitrarily close. | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 10:59 | comment | added | sammy gerbil | It shows the spectral lines of dozens of elements. You can see at a glance which spectral lines coincide. Isn't that what you are asking? | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 10:57 | comment | added | Spade | @sammygerbil I don't want to be rude but I fail to se how that page answers my question? | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 10:40 | comment | added | sammy gerbil | -1. No research effort. Google "spectral lines of elements" and you will find astro.u-strasbg.fr/~koppen/discharge at the #1 hit. | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 8:33 | history | edited | Emilio Pisanty | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 2 characters in body; edited title
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Sep 5, 2017 at 7:36 | answer | added | Emilio Pisanty | timeline score: 6 | |
Sep 5, 2017 at 7:26 | history | asked | Spade | CC BY-SA 3.0 |