RE: Today I learned something new about LEDs

jw0752 — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:49:51 GMT

Hi Frank,

What a neat experiment and a great post. I always appreciate a mixture of electronics and physics in the blog posts. I will have to give this one a try myself.

John

RE: Today I learned something new about LEDs

DAB — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:24:09 GMT

I have to point out that both Planck's constant and the energy formula you presented are probably not correct.

In my research, I discovered that Planck's constant has only been validated for wavelengths between 1 and 3 microns.

The energy formula E = hf is incorrect.

The energy of photons is determined by their mass, which decreases with frequency. It was this wrong interpretation that makes people assume that high frequency photons have more energy.

In fact, the lower frequency photons have much more energy, which is why IR is the main component of energy transfer.

Planck created his fudge factor h when he was trying to fit his data to the formula. He needed a way to account for what he thought was an anomaly when he ran into UV light. His factor h fixed his data and Planck himself worried that it was wrong. Unfortunately, the Quantum Mechanics mafia grabbed hold of the constant and declared it valid and immutable. So now everyone uses the constant everywhere, even though it has never been verified.

The experiments you ran fit his rough data, but it misses the real issue of understanding what photons are and how they really work.

DAB

RE: Today I learned something new about LEDs

14rhb — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 08:29:26 GMT

A great and interesting write up with clear explanations of what you are doing - thank you. I think your initial 11% error is very good considering your home-made approach.