Electromagnetic Spectrum
Electromagnetic Spectrum
[Everything is one big panel.]
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
These waves travel through the electromagnetic field. They were formerly carried by the aether, which was decommissioned in 1897 due to budget cuts.
Other waves: Slinky waves [Cueball and Megan hold the ends of a tangled slinky.] Sound waves [There is a snippet of a frequency band. Between 20 Hz and 20 KHz is labeled "Audible Sound." Towards the top is a line labeled "That high-pitched noise in empty rooms."] The wave [A row of people does a wave.]
[Three parallel scales are across the bottom. The first is lambda (m), ranging from 100Mm to 100fm; second is f (Hz), which starts at 1 Hz and reaches 100 THz about 2/3 of the way along, after which the labels read "other entertaining greek prefixes like peta- exa- and zappa-;" last is Q (Gal^2/Coloumb), whose labels are 17, 117, pi, 17, 42, phi, e^pi-pi, -2, 540^50, and 11^2. Above the scales and lined up accurately with the first two are the following:]
Power & Telephone (100Mm to 1km) Radio & TV (1km to somewhere between 1m and 10cm); above that are many boxes showing subranges (AM, VHF, UHF, 24/7 NPR pledge drives, a very thin band for the space rays controlling Steve Ballmer, 99.3 "The Fox," 101.5 "The Badger," 106.3 "The Frightened Squirrel," cell phone cancer rays, CIA, ham radio, kosher radio, shouting car dealership commercials.) Microwaves (a bit more than 10cm to a bit more than 1mm); it also has subranges (aliens, just below SETI, wifi, FHF, brain waves, sulawesi, gravity) Toasters (about 1mm to about 100 micrometers) IR (about 100 micrometers to somewhere between 1 micrometer and 1 nm); above that is a bell graph labeled "Superman"s heat vision," with a motorcycle driving up the left side labeled "Jack Black's Heat Vision." Visible light (and, under it, visible dark); above that is a bell graph labeled "sunlight." There's a breakout chart above it showing the visible spectrum from 700nm (red) to 450nm (violet). There's an arrow pointing to where octarine would be, somewhere off to the side. Above that are bars showing the absorption spectra for hydrogen, helium, Depends(R) (yellow only), and Tampax(R) (red only). UV (about 100nm to about 10nm) Miller Light (a thin bar around 10nm) An unlabeled section with a thin line above it showing the frequency of the main death star laser A blocked-off portion labeled "Censored Under Patriot Act." X-rays (from about 1nm to about 10pm); a line above shows the frequency of mail-order x-ray glasses. Somewhere vaguely above the 10pm mark is a potato. Gamma/cosmic rays (10pm and smaller); above that is a bar marked Sinister Google Projects that also trails off into higher frequencies, and blogorays, which are slightly lower.

This panel is a play on the Electromagnetic spectrum , showing a large piece of the spectrum and examples of phenomena that absorb or emit light along the spectra. Such spectra are commonly used in physics or astronomy education contexts when discussing the nature of light. This comic extends it to absurd lengths by including examples that may be variously hyper-specific, humorous, or non-EM phenomena.
The first two scales at the bottom show the wavelength λ (in meters) and the frequency f (in Hertz) of the wave. The values are related as λ=c/f, where c is the speed of light. The last line showing Q(Gal²/Coloumb) is nonsense; Gal ( Gallon ) is a unit of liquid volume measurement, and Coloumb is a likely typo for Coulomb , the SI unit of electric charge. Photons do not have volume in the traditional sense of the word, and are electrically neutral (thus carrying no charge).
In 1887, the Michelson–Morley experiment proved for the first time that the aether theory was wrong. The year (1897) cited underneath the comic title may be an incorrectly-dated reference to this experiment. Nevertheless, after that time, many physicists like Hendrik Lorentz or Joseph Larmor were still working on some aether theories. Albert Einstein 's theory of Special Relativity in 1905 helped explain the theoretical basis for the lack of aether and was a definitive step in discarding previous work.
The wavelength starts at high values on the left and decreases in a logarithmic scale to the right. As a result of the inverse relationship between frequency and wavelength, the frequency scale starts at low values and increases logarithmically. The nonsense Q parameter does not change monotonically with either frequency or wavelength.
Both scales are labeled with powers of ten and with metric prefixes . For frequencies above 100 tera- Hertz, it just says "other entertaining Greek prefixes like peta- and exa- and zappa-." The last prefix should be zetta- (denoting a factor of 10 21 ), but is intentionally mislabeled, referencing musician Frank Zappa .
Other waves
Three drawings of other types of waves than the electromagnetic type:
Power and Telephone
Radio and TV
Microwaves
Toasters
IR (infrared)
Visible light
UV (ultraviolet)
Miller Light
Empty section
Censored under Patriot Act
X-rays
Gamma/Cosmic rays
And finally, the Title Text : Randall likes to speculate what the world would look like if humans could see radio waves, gamma waves, etc. Such a thought experiment would be pretty abstract due to the total lack of a frame of reference (since everything outside the visible light spectrum is by definition invisible and thus beyond human optical perception), but for many people, that's also what makes it enticing. Randall immediately turns this profound train of thought around with a crude joke that he wants to know what the viewer's sister would look like in the nude, an activity for which x-rays would be useful.
[Everything is one big panel.]
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
These waves travel through the electromagnetic field. They were formerly carried by the aether, which was decommissioned in 1897 due to budget cuts.
Other waves: Slinky waves [Cueball and Megan hold the ends of a tangled slinky.] Sound waves [There is a snippet of a frequency band. Between 20 Hz and 20 KHz is labeled "Audible Sound." Towards the top is a line labeled "That high-pitched noise in empty rooms."] The wave [A row of people does a wave.]
[Three parallel scales are across the bottom. The first is lambda (m), ranging from 100Mm to 100fm; second is f (Hz), which starts at 1 Hz and reaches 100 THz about 2/3 of the way along, after which the labels read "other entertaining greek prefixes like peta- exa- and zappa-;" last is Q (Gal^2/Coloumb), whose labels are 17, 117, pi, 17, 42, phi, e^pi-pi, -2, 540^50, and 11^2. Above the scales and lined up accurately with the first two are the following:]
Power & Telephone (100Mm to 1km) Radio & TV (1km to somewhere between 1m and 10cm); above that are many boxes showing subranges (AM, VHF, UHF, 24/7 NPR pledge drives, a very thin band for the space rays controlling Steve Ballmer, 99.3 "The Fox," 101.5 "The Badger," 106.3 "The Frightened Squirrel," cell phone cancer rays, CIA, ham radio, kosher radio, shouting car dealership commercials.) Microwaves (a bit more than 10cm to a bit more than 1mm); it also has subranges (aliens, just below SETI, wifi, FHF, brain waves, sulawesi, gravity) Toasters (about 1mm to about 100 micrometers) IR (about 100 micrometers to somewhere between 1 micrometer and 1 nm); above that is a bell graph labeled "Superman"s heat vision," with a motorcycle driving up the left side labeled "Jack Black's Heat Vision." Visible light (and, under it, visible dark); above that is a bell graph labeled "sunlight." There's a breakout chart above it showing the visible spectrum from 700nm (red) to 450nm (violet). There's an arrow pointing to where octarine would be, somewhere off to the side. Above that are bars showing the absorption spectra for hydrogen, helium, Depends(R) (yellow only), and Tampax(R) (red only). UV (about 100nm to about 10nm) Miller Light (a thin bar around 10nm) An unlabeled section with a thin line above it showing the frequency of the main death star laser A blocked-off portion labeled "Censored Under Patriot Act." X-rays (from about 1nm to about 10pm); a line above shows the frequency of mail-order x-ray glasses. Somewhere vaguely above the 10pm mark is a potato. Gamma/cosmic rays (10pm and smaller); above that is a bar marked Sinister Google Projects that also trails off into higher frequencies, and blogorays, which are slightly lower.
