Seeking advice on matters of energy for fictional work

miec

Hi

I am hoping someone can help me in some work I am doing. Basically I am writing a fictional novel and one of the character's is creating a device that allows them to view energy. I am not science based but I remember someone telling me when they were studying physics that there was a machine that allowed them to see energy move, now forgive me if I have got it wrong here or sound completely dumb in this matter, but if such a thing exists can someone tell me about it in an easy to understand manner or point me to websites, links here, etc on the subject and also is there a machine that can capture energy and hold it in? If there is can you point me to any related threads or sites on that too. Many thanks in advance.

Professor_Fink

miec wrote: »

I am not science based but I remember someone telling me when they were studying physics that there was a machine that allowed them to see energy move, now forgive me if I have got it wrong here or sound completely dumb in this matter, but if such a thing exists can someone tell me about it in an easy to understand manner or point me to websites, links here, etc on the subject and also is there a machine that can capture energy and hold it in?

Hi,

Basically everything is energy. More specifically, everything can be seen as being is an energy state (hence E=mc^2), and so I am not exactly sure what you want this hypothetical device to do. Do you want it to see heat? There are infrared cameras that will do this. Do you want it to see chemical properties? Spectrometers do exactly this. The list goes on. There are even more ways of storing energy (capacitors, batteries, heat reservoirs, fly wheels, etc.). Perhaps if you gave us a more specific description of what you want the device to do, we could be more helpful.

miec

Basically everything is energy. More specifically, everything can be seen as being is an energy state (hence E=mc^2), and so I am not exactly sure what you want this hypothetical device to do. Do you want it to see heat? There are infrared cameras that will do this. Do you want it to see chemical properties? Spectrometers do exactly this. The list goes on. There are even more ways of storing energy (capacitors, batteries, heat reservoirs, fly wheels, etc.). Perhaps if you gave us a more specific description of what you want the device to do, we could be more helpful.

Thanks for the above professor fink and helping to narrow down my question, and having done a bit of my own digging, I want to know how does one see or read electromagnetic waves, and how can scientists look at the inside of an atom. The device that I am creating for the book is one that will read energy patterns in people, not so much their body tempature but something that records a person experiencing a strong form of emotion (if such a thing exists) or something that monitors the frequency of brain waves.

Professor_Fink

miec wrote: »

Thanks for the above professor fink and helping to narrow down my question, and having done a bit of my own digging, I want to know how does one see or read electromagnetic waves, and how can scientists look at the inside of an atom.

This is easy, our eyes see a part of the electromagnetic spectrum but it ranges from gamma rays through xrays, UV, visible light to infrared, microwaves and radiowaves. There are various different kinds of detectors for each range, but we can handle most of them one way or another.

Determining atomic structure is generally done simple by measuring the wavelength of the light emitted or absorbed by an atom (a process called spectroscopy), although if you want to examine the nucleus you need to probe it with accelerated massive particles. That said, from your next sentence I am guessing that none of this is what you want.

miec wrote: »

The device that I am creating for the book is one that will read energy patterns in people, not so much their body tempature but something that records a person experiencing a strong form of emotion (if such a thing exists) or something that monitors the frequency of brain waves.

This isn't energy, per se. Our thoughts are governed by electrochemical activity in our brain. There is not really a net change in energy, but rather certain areas become active depending on the task we are doing or the brain functions we are using. It is already possible to measure these things, by imaging the brains activity. This can be done using functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). I suspect this is what you had heard about.

miec

Thank you, you are a star