Note:

The author of these essays is Philip Mintz

Email : philmintz@lycos.com

Two Purposes Of Science

Science serves very well in healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, national defense, , entertainment, communication, and architecture.If I left something out, I apologize. The first purpose of science is technical.

The second purpose of science is theoretical. It is an attempt to understand ourselves and the world we live in. Whereas the first purpose dealt with the tangible, empirical, and observable, the second deals with ideas. Ideas exist only in a brain. They may be communicated from one brain to another, but the desired understanding remains an individual,personal matter.

As a former high-school teacher of science and mathematics, I constantly tried to improve my transmission of understanding to others. In that experience,I discovered that many of the theories that were presented in textbooks were misleading and faulty in various ways. I began to realize that scientific proof meant practical usefulness. However, for the purpose of understanding, there is no proving or disproving any theory. There is only the personal feeling of some level of understanding. I have spent years of time and thought in the quest for understanding. For my purposes I have rejected conventional theories, and substituted my own theories.

The Building Blocks Of Matter

If there is one common ingredient in all things, knowledge of that ingredient will go far in explaining all things. Conversely, the knowledge that we have of all things helps us to determine the nature of the common ingredient. We already know that all matter consists of one or more of the chemical elements, and all of the elements (except hydrogen) contain protons, neutrons, and electrons.

The common ingredient of all particles is charge. Obviously, electrons have negative charge, and protons have positive charge. Neutrons have been known to fragment into protons, electrons,and neutrinos; and neutrinos consist of equal quantities of positive and negative charge.

The next question is whether charge is a continuum or a collection of bits. We can decide this if we investigate photons. Those photons which are emitted by atomic nuclei have been known, in some cases, to fragment into two parts, an electron and a positron. Therefore we know that a photon contains negative bits and positive bits. Since the quantity of matter in photons varies tremendously, from gamma rays on one extreme to infrared rays on the other extreme, we know that charge comes in bits.

It takes about one billionth of a second for a photon to be emitted, either from an atomic nucleus or from an electron. Knowing the speed of light, we can calculate the distance traveled by the front end of a photon before the rear end starts moving. It comes to about 30 centimeters.Therefore a photon is about 30 centimeters long.

We can calculate from the known speed of light, the known length of a photon, and the known frequency of the photon, the mass of one bit, 1.852 x 10^-39 grams.

The characteristics of an electron are derived from the nature of neg bits. There is an interaction between two neg bits. The bits repel each other. The force between two neg bits is stronger when they are close together. However, there is a point at very short separation,where the force does an about face. Closer than that, there is a much stronger force, this time attractive.

If two neg bits are arriving from a considerable distance at a very high speed, as they move closer, their speed is reduced. If the bits are still moving toward each other when they reach the critical point, they rush together and adhere to each other. A third bit coming their way would be repelled with twice as much force at any given distance, but if it can pass the critical point it will be held strongly. In the long run, so many bits would accumulate that they extend to the critical point, where any new arrival will be repelled. An aggregate of that number of bits is the core of the electron. As far as we can discover, the number of bits per electron core is constant and universal.

There are ways to measure the quantity of matter in an electron. Such a measurement is called mass. If the unit of mass is the bit, the mass would be the number of bits.

There are machines that accelerate electrons. In these devices, we discover that the mass of an electron increases when the speed increases. Evidently increased speed is accompanied by increased numbers of bits per electron. However, the charge of the electron is constant. Outside of the core, pairs of neg and pos accumulate. It is reasonable to conclude that the arrival of neg-pos pairs causes the electron to gain speed.

If we could examine the structure of the rapid-moving electron, we would find the pos end of a neg-pos pair closer to the core. The neg end of a neg-pos pair points away from the core.

In the world as we experience it, there are many and varied forces. Considering only electrons, we should find all of them sending out neg-pos in all directions. At the same time each electron receives neg-pos from all directions. Imagine one fast-moving electron coming in toward the electron that we are watching. At first a slight excess of arriving neg-pos, coming from the direction of the intruder, starts to move the electron. The point is that the push is greater on one side of the electron than on the other side, because of the intrusion.

We shall return to this subject later. In the meantime consider the proton. Its charge is equal to the charge of the electron, but it is a positive charge. The proton has a core of pos bits. The difference is that the surrounding neg-pos bits outnumber the core bits 1840 to one. For some reason which I can't imagine, this arrangement is almost perfectly stable.

In a particle accelerator, protons gain speed as they accumulate neg-pos pairs. At ordinary speeds, the additional bits would not be noticeable; but at speeds near the speed of light, the total number of bits on the proton might more than double. Then, when the accelerated proton reaches its target, it yields all of the extra bits, and becomes a normal proton again. The extra bits seem to become several kinds of particles, which disintegrate in a tiny fraction of a second.

To summarize: everything consists of bits, which come in negative or positive charge. Any increase in the motion of a particle is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of bits that it carries. The behavior of particles is determined by the attractive and repulsive forces between charged particles. The rest of physics and chemistry follows from the above.

HOW I FOUND THE MASS OF A BIT

It has been observed from experiments on the photoelectric effect and lasers, and some nuclear radiation, that it takes 10^-9 seconds to either absorb or emit a photon. Since the photon is a procession of pairs of bits, and each pair travels at the rate of 3 x 10¹⁰ centimeters a second, the front end travels thirty centimeters before the rear end starts moving. So a photon is 30 centimeters long.

The distance between the first pair of bits in a photon and the third pair of bits is the wavelength. It is the length of one cycle. A cycle consists of two pairs. The wavelength of each color of light can be measured in a spectrometer. So we know the wavelength and the size of a photon. If we divide the length of the photon, 30 centimeters, by a wavelength of the photon, we find the number of cycles in the photon.

To be technical, we have described the frequency per 10^-9 seconds. The professional use of the word has the meaning of frequency in cycles per second. However, there is no such thing as a photon that has a length other than 30 centimeters. There are other processions of neg-pos pairs; but they are not photons.

Now for our computation: The mass of an electron or positron is 9.1 x 10^-27 grams. The electron and positron combine and reshuffle their neg and pos, and become a gamma photon, whose mass is two times 9.1 x 10^-27 = 1.82 x 10^-26 grams.

The frequency is 2.4594 x 10²⁰ cycles per second. Multiply (2.4594 x 10²⁰) x 10^-9 and get 2.4594 x 10¹¹ cycles per photon. Divide the mass by the cycles, 1.82 x 10^-26 divided by 2.4594 x 10¹¹, and get the mass of one cycle, 7.407 x 10^-39 grams.

There are 4 bits in one cycle. Divide 7.407 x 10^-39 by 4, and get the mass of one bit, which is 1.852 x 10^-39 grams.

Call it Mintz's nunber, 1.852 x 10^-39

In case you think that nobody else thinks that neg and pos are the fundamental building blocks of matter, I refer you to common sense science

Also visit Nature of Matter