An interesting article appears in this weeks Science News, (oct 4,
2003) , starting on page 218. It is about a photonic crystal that may be violating Plank's law. Plank's law has to do with the amount of radiation from a black body. This new crystal looks, at first glance, as if it exceeds by about three times the max. allowed by Plank's law. This photonic crystal is made of evenly spaced tungsten bars laid over each other in a criss-cross pattern. The bars are about 1/100 as thick as a human hair. A picture of the crystal taken with an electron micrscope shows the spacing to be about twice the bar thickness. This array of bars is what makes it a photonic crystal as it lets through only certain wavelengths. Similar crystals on a centimeter scale were made in the late 1980's and demonstrated the concept by guiding long wavelength radiation such as microwaves. Anyway, it's a good article, involves metal, and Science News is a good magazine. Available at the library. There is a web site but I don't know if this article is on it and if non-subscribers can view it. The usual disclaimers apply, including the one that states that I'm not too smart and may have got something wrong in the above. Cheers, Eric R Snow- posted
20 years ago