light in a box

say you had a box whose inside walls were super-highly reflective mirrors. Then you place a light bulb, activated by remote control, in the box. You close the box up real good. Now you turn the light bulb on, then off. If the box is in a dark room, when you open it, will you see light 'escaping'?

In theory, if the sides were _perfectly_ reflective, then yes. However, I don't think we have any such material that is reflective enough that the light would remain unabsorbed/untransmitted for more than a millionth of a second.














Or something.
Until someone more learnzed in quantum optics tells us different.

The light would be absorbed by the lightbulb.

It's a perfect lightbulb in the same sense as the walls are perfect mirrors. Physics has many such archetypal objects for use in problems and though experiments.

you can also use them in thought experiments

In the limit that you keep the light on infinitely, an infinite amount of light/photons will accumulate inside the box...  Eventually, the radiation pressure will tear the box apart.  Even before then, it'd make a really powerful flash grenade.

Its possible to do this via computer generated simulation.
My guess is when the box is open after a long period of time you will get many beams, bright light

>>5
Good save. I'm sure dozens of 4channers were moments away from trying though experiments without any of the years of training necessary to ensure safety.

what about a dick in a box

>>9
i was thinking about that when i made the topic.

>>10
Wow, you must love dick.

DICK INA BOX, oh!Dick ina box baaabee

No, the light bulb is blown

I assume we're talking about SNL to ridicule the idiot, yes?

>>11
no i love dick in a box

>>15
What about 3 dicks in a box? (The fourth side is for you, and it would be awkward to have more than one person per side\a person on the bottom, unless it was a fucking huge box)

>>16
nah, i prefer my junk to other men's
and besides, 3 dicks per box would probably cause a space-time sausage implosion.

if the mirrors are perfectly reflective, which none are, then you will see a brief pulse upon opening the box, dependent on the shape and size of the interior of the box.

for example, assuming the simple case of a 'box' consisting of two mirrors 1000 miles apart, you would observe a pulse lasting 10.74 milliseconds, assuming that the light is evenly dispersed, traveling in a straight line, and an equal amount is traveling in both directions when you open the box.

Obviously, if the box was the kind of thing you could hold in your hands then you're not going to be able to notice the ~nanosecond pulse emerging from the box, not to mention the fact that the pulse would have to be reflected millions of times between the time you turned off the light and opened the box without being absorbed. 

poop

Lemme tell you summn. assuming the box is full of vacuum,(see empty, devoid of matter,) the energy in the light is dissipated in the form of heat when it hits the walls and lightbulb. Find a way to explain that away.

yeah.. that was the caveat:
"if the mirrors are perfectly reflective, which none are,"

though I should have added infinitely small light source and vacuum. whatever. 1000 mile long box for 10.74 millisecond pulse is the important part.

If the theory around the 'graviton' is true, it could act as a 100% reflective material.. in a backwards way, by pulling the light around the graviton.

Acually, if the condition where correct, would not two blackholes be able to slingshoot photons between eatchother?