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could someone please answer this...

hey

do you know this answer:

if a laser beam is shined onto a window, and the window vibrated, what would happen to the laser beam?

thanks :smile:

xxxx

Reply 1

Mehh

chbutterfly

hey

do you know this answer:

if a laser beam is shined onto a window, and the window vibrated, what would happen to the laser beam?

thanks :smile:

xxxx

That is a strange question. But as it goes I am pretty sure that there would be no effect.
Light has a frequency in the THz range. For any effect to be occuring with the window (that is a time dependant effect, since I assume that we are talking about the movement of the window) the window needs to be vibrating at near the same range of frequency, which is billions of times a second, which should break any glass you can possibly make.

To the light the window is more or less standing still.

The question you pose is similar to "Do you know what happens when a Bugatti Veyron with the shuttle booster rockets attached to the sides when it crosses a Techtonic Plate boundary?"

Reply 2

figureeight

Mehh

"Do you know what happens when a Bugatti Veyron with the shuttle booster rockets attached to the sides when it crosses a Techtonic Plate boundary?"

pi?

Reply 3

Mehh

figureeight

pi?

The Bugatti Veyron runs at a few hundred miles per hour, nay 1km per 10s. That same car crossing a road that is shifting (because of the plate boundary) at the rate of 3cm per year is likely to make very little difference at all.
The emphase the point, I decided to add Shuttle Booster rockets to the equation to further the point to since the scale of a Bugatti Veryron vs a Techtonic plate is several orders of magnitude less than the difference between the frequency of light and how fast you can move a piece of mirror.

Reply 4

Morbo

chbutterfly

hey

do you know this answer:

if a laser beam is shined onto a window, and the window vibrated, what would happen to the laser beam?

thanks :smile:

xxxx

Assuming the glass is transparent at the laser frequency, the acoustic waves in the glass would set up a time-varying refractive index that would phase modulate the beam.

Why do you ask?