One of the fundamental laws of nature is that quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes.
Our experiences with heat reveal deeper leaps from quantity to quality. We put our hand over a pan on the stove to feel how hot it is. In this case, we can't see heat but we can feel it. We can feel heat that comes from the standard incandescent light bulbs. Here heat is associated with light. You can bask in the sun that comes through a window, but if you go outside, the same light can give you a sun burn. The glass absorbs the ultraviolet vibrations in light which cause a sunburn.
Everything vibrates, including the blood in your veins, the atoms in your body or the sun in the sky. These vibrations, pulses or throbs push outward when they expand and decline inwards when they contract. This interpenetration of these two opposite motions creates energy, taking the form of waves. All energies are transmitted as waves.
Notice the diagram to the right. <coming soon>The wave diagram shows both the expansion outward (the positive direction the axis) and the con traction inward (the negative direction). A wave includes both phases - the positive and the negative. The sideways "S" shape shows the shape of a standard wave. Waves in the ocean demonstrate this clearly.
The horizontal axis represents zero power in the wave. When we detect the vibrations that we call light, we are receiving the energy of the outward pushes. Since each expansion of the vibrating object is followed by a contraction, this means that energy is not transmitted continuously. In fact, half the time it is not there at all. Therefore energy is discontinuous and interrupted, something that at first seems very strange. We have the illusion that energy is steady and continuous because the vibrations are so fast that we cannot detect the interruptions with our senses. Frederick Engels stated that Nature appears not to be made of leaps because it is comprised only of leaps. The wave nature of energy is an example of this principle.
The point where the wave curve crosses the horizontal line is called the "node". Every single wave has this nodal point. Though there is zero energy at this point, it is a hugely important moment in the process because here the nature of the wave changes quality. On the graph, this is the change from the positive region, where energy is pushing outwards, to the negative region, where the energy begins to collapse inwards. Scientists attach great importance to the study of nodal points because they are the critical point in time where a new quality begins.
Look at the diagram again. The height of the wave (the vertical axis) shows the amount of power of the vibration, outward in the positive direction and inward in the negative direction. This shows the strength of the pulsing of the energy source in space. The horizontal axis shows the passage of time. Thus a wave is both a wiggle in space and a wiggle in time. Therefore wave also unites the opposites of time and space.
The diagram to the right reveals another Important set of opposites that describes waves. The vertical axis shows the frequency, the rate of vibration, or the number of vibrations per second.
The horizontal axis shows the length of the wave. Where the rate of vibration - or frequency - is high, the length of the wave is short. Where the frequency is low, the wavelength is longer. Frequency and wavelength have an inverse relation- ship: when one increases, the other decreases and vice-versa. However, it is the frequency - the rate of vibration - that is fundamental. The vibrations deter- mine the wavelength, not the other way around.
Science has discovered one of the great unifying principles of the universe by using frequency and wavelength to compare different energies. This is known as the Electromagnetic Spectrum:
<graphic will be coming soon>
The top row - f (Hz) - lists the frequency (measured in Hertz or cycles/second). It increases from low frequency at the left to high frequency on the right. The narrow sliver of visible light in the middle vibrates more than a million million times a second! The second row shows wavelength - (measured in meters). Here the longest wavelengths - those waves that are one million (106) meters long - on the left, occur at the lowest frequencies. The scale moves to the shortest wavelength - almost a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a meter long (10-16) - on the right.
We are constantly bathed by a surging ocean of invisible waves that flow round and through us. Radio, short-wave and TV waves from manmade sources have penetrated us since before we were born. These waves range from 100m long (about 300 feet) to about one foot in wavelength. Ultraviolet light from the sun and cosmic rays naturally radiate to the earth. These energies are more dangerous because their wavelengths are smaller than our cells and can disrupt our DNA.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum ties together all forms of energy as simply the quantitative increase of frequency, or vibrations per second. At certain specific points, the quantitative changes in frequency add something new and produce qualitatively different forms of energy. Take a common sewing pin and hold it with a pair of pliers into the flame of a gas stove. The atoms of the pin have always been vibrating, but at low frequencies. Heating the pin increases the rate of vibration and starts to move it up the Electromagnetic spectrum.
As the rate of vibrations increase, the pin begins to give off radio waves. This is the principle behind old fashioned crystal radios. If you put a little pressure on the crystal, it will vibrate at a very specific frequency that matches the vibrations given off by a radio station. In modern radios, adjusting the dial to your favorite station controls the rate that an electronic oscillator vibrates. This selects the proper frequency of vibrations of the atoms in the antenna.
As the pin's atoms quantitatively increases in frequency due to the heat, the pin will begin to give off qualitatively different waves - microwaves - the same vibrations we use in microwave ovens and to send cell phone messages. Increase the frequency a little and the atoms make another qualitative leap, now emitting heat. Increase the frequency a little more and the atomic vibrations leap again, producing light. If you could control the stove heat sufficiently, you could "dial up" different colors that the pin would give off.
Further quantitative increases in frequency (vibration rates greater than your stove can cause) and the pin will begin to give off ultraviolet light, the cause of sunburns and skin cancers. Further qualitative leaps mean that the exact same object could give off x-rays and, at an even higher frequency, deadly forms of nuclear radiation.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum uses the opposites of frequency and wavelength to unite all forms of vibration into a quantitative continuum that relates and explains every form of energy in the Universe. Amazingly, the atoms of a given object can produce qualitatively different forms of energy depending on what frequency they are made to vibrate.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum was predicted in the 1880s and was verified by experiments over the next 40 years. The laws of Dialectics were articulated by Marx and Engels 40 years earlier. The core principles - motion, change, the contradiction of opposites, the relation of quality and quantity and the leap - all reveal themselves in the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
Dialectical laws are critical tools for science to understand the complexity and beauty of Nature. They represent a high point in the synthesis of scientific ideas. However these ideas threaten the capitalist system by indicating its impermanence and showing how it must necessarily pass away. Thus science has historically shied away from these concepts. However, since Nature objectively is dialectical, scientists are forced to return to these principles since they explain how the Universe operates.
J.B.S. Haldane, the great British geneticist, put it like this:
"Had Engels' method of thinking been more familiar, the transformation of our ideas on physics which have occurred during the last thirty years would have been smoother." (from the Introduction (1939) to The Dialectics of Nature by Frederick Engels)
Oakland, 2002
