What is the maximum Bandwidth? - Sixty Symbols

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  • čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
  • Just how much data can we transfer using fibre optic cables?
    Featuring Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham... / profmike_m
    Check our Computerphile: / computerphile
    Visit our website at www.sixtysymbols.com/
    We're on Facebook at / sixtysymbols
    And Twitter at #!/periodicvideos
    This project features scientists from The University of Nottingham
    www.nottingham.ac.uk/physics/i...
    Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran
    A run-down of Brady's channels:
    periodicvideos.blogspot.co.uk/...
  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 1,7K

  • @GravisTKD
    @GravisTKD Před 8 lety +410

    Ironically, the video stopped to buffer as soon as he mentioned "bandwidth" for the first time. I chuckled.

    • @NOMAD-qp3dd
      @NOMAD-qp3dd Před 7 lety +2

      hehehe

    • @oskarjankowski5709
      @oskarjankowski5709 Před 6 lety +3

      no it didn't

    • @stabgan
      @stabgan Před 6 lety +2

      I fapped

    • @kindlin
      @kindlin Před 6 lety +1

      Oskar,
      Do you not know what buffering is?

    • @TruthNerds
      @TruthNerds Před 5 lety

      I conclude that the bandwidth of your line is less than 800 terabits per second. ;-)

  • @YassineAvernakis
    @YassineAvernakis Před 10 lety +579

    I like the part were the Professor says he doesn't know how much long is the shortest pulse, but says "I can look it up if you want". Such great minds have no problem with not knowing something, while this planet is so full of know-it-all s.

    • @nozz71
      @nozz71 Před 6 lety +19

      Humility will get you a long way in this field!
      10:18

    • @thedude951
      @thedude951 Před 6 lety +12

      *cough*Neil Dygrasse Tyson*cough*

    • @giorgosd3624
      @giorgosd3624 Před 6 lety +9

      Its just a number, i dont think anyone is proud of remembering numbers

    • @JorgetePanete
      @JorgetePanete Před 5 lety

      @@thedude951 Degrasse

    • @JorgetePanete
      @JorgetePanete Před 5 lety +1

      @@giorgosd3624 It's*
      don't*

  • @AliMoeeny
    @AliMoeeny Před 9 lety +28

    Wow, that was the best explanation of fourier transform I've ever seen.

    • @StefanoBorini
      @StefanoBorini Před 8 lety +5

      Ali Moeeny I am not sure. He introduced some math, but he steered clear of even naming FT. I think that if he directly went for the concept, explained it, and made it part of the vocabulary, the whole explanation would have sound less sketchy.

    • @wiadroman
      @wiadroman Před 8 lety +4

      +Ali Moeeny What are you talking about, he didn't explain FT at all.

    • @ryanmcgowan3061
      @ryanmcgowan3061 Před 8 lety +2

      +Ali Moeeny I was kind of surprised that I got to the end of the video and Fourier Transform was never brought up.

  • @omegasrevenge
    @omegasrevenge Před 8 lety +470

    "A terrabyte of data.... in a few hundredths of a second."
    *Salivate*

    • @jimdecamp7204
      @jimdecamp7204 Před 6 lety +32

      Run lots of cables in parallel. Problem solved.

    • @Austin101123
      @Austin101123 Před 6 lety +19

      And that's on a single wire. I imagine you could have 1000s of wires on a single cable, yes? Maybe you run into more physical limitations or errors at too small of a size too, though

    • @fudgelame
      @fudgelame Před 6 lety +3

      Run lots of cables in parallel yes but also with slightly different properties allowing them to be a control for overall transmission (plus 'overhead') for further range of frequencies (handling things as a bundle). Ie the different cables extend in part the range of frequencies available resulting in more relative bandwidth per cable.

    • @jimdecamp7204
      @jimdecamp7204 Před 6 lety +8

      There is an energy density problem, and mutual coupling between wires. Shannon's theorem says that data rate is given by bandwidth times signal to noise ratio. (For our purposes, dynamic range is a limit on signal to noise ratio.) A one Hertz bandwidth on a single cable can transmit a terabyte per second with a mere 44 teradB of dynamic range, or equivalently 8 x 10^12 bits of resolution.

    • @MrRyanroberson1
      @MrRyanroberson1 Před 6 lety +11

      all we need is to start encoding data in sperms and transmit them through pipes. they carry terabytes of data per teaspoon, so if we want to copy entire massive databases just have a sperm truck go to the new location, then do a memory check to see if everything transmitted and use the internet to make up the tiny difference.

  • @DigGil3
    @DigGil3 Před 9 lety +228

    The word of the day is "fourier series".

    • @mattsmith2115
      @mattsmith2115 Před 7 lety +8

      *Pee Wee and the audience go apeshit*

    • @stevenswift310
      @stevenswift310 Před 5 lety +6

      That is two words.

    • @malou5290
      @malou5290 Před 5 lety

      harmonics :)

    • @ElasticReality
      @ElasticReality Před 5 lety

      I think our science has gotten to the point where a little Fourier De-synthesis might be just what the doctor ordered.

    • @MrJdcirbo
      @MrJdcirbo Před 5 lety +3

      That's not one word. It's an infinite number of words with varying phases and amplitudes added together. 😉

  • @samueletorregrossa1923
    @samueletorregrossa1923 Před 10 lety +7

    I'm not a physicist, but once you get used to this type of video you start to understand them better and better, it just takes time,

  • @TURBOMIKEIFY
    @TURBOMIKEIFY Před 10 lety +12

    This explains why musical instruments make that "wobbly" sound when they're out of tune on the same note. AMAZING!

    • @niks660097
      @niks660097 Před 2 lety +2

      yeah, especially in guitars you can hear beats and harmony off diff. instruments creating non-periodic reverbs, musicians are pretty close to science compared to other non-scientific fields..

  • @KevinVanOrd
    @KevinVanOrd Před 10 lety +5

    Michael Merrifield , I just wanted to thank you for making me passionate about topics I never knew I had passion for until I saw your videos here and on Deep Sky Videos. You have pushed me to learn and understand some of the involved math, encouraged me to purchase a telescope for skygazing purposes, and opened up new areas for me to explore. I am more grateful to you, Ed Copeland, Meghan Gray, Phil Moriarty, and Roger Bowley than I could ever express.

  • @theCodyReeder
    @theCodyReeder Před 5 lety +21

    What is the ultimate limit for sending through the vacuum of space?

    • @justuseodysee7348
      @justuseodysee7348 Před 5 lety +11

      That would be whole spectrum from kilometers long radio waves to planck length sized photons.
      It would be some absurdly large number

    • @vaibhav1618
      @vaibhav1618 Před 3 lety

      I think the lower bound is definitely the size of intergalactic dust (so perhaps IR?) I don't think there is an upper bound tbh, since space can have almost no mattet (a few atoms per m^3).

    • @voxelsofsorrow
      @voxelsofsorrow Před 3 lety

      @@vaibhav1618 what about the bandwidth of a signal sent between two Casimir plates at vacuum? that'd be interesting to graph out.

    • @vaibhav1618
      @vaibhav1618 Před 3 lety

      @@voxelsofsorrow interesting, but what are we charting? Bandwidth vs plate separation?

    • @voxelsofsorrow
      @voxelsofsorrow Před 3 lety

      @@vaibhav1618 exactly! it's kinda interesting because the plates will cut off lower frequencies while allowing higher frequencies as they get closer

  • @alfpumper
    @alfpumper Před 10 lety +9

    Please make more videos about "engineering"
    I love physics, but the fact that I am an engineer, makes me want more videos like this.
    I have watch this channel for a year or so, please keep it up!

  • @alexdrudigmail
    @alexdrudigmail Před 7 lety +3

    The reason why you don’t switch on and off and use a sum of sine waves to make 1s & 0s instead (Brady’s unanswered question) is that by modulating multiple sine waves you can actually encode a crapload more information per second into the optical fiber. The resulting non-sine signal contains many more contemporaneous 1s encoded.
    Professor Merrifield explained instead that you can simulate the “ON/OFF” physical phenomenon with a finite sum of many sine waves. The more numerous they are, the more squared is the resulting wave, and the easier it is to tell a 1 from a zero, hence a wider bandwidth.

  • @InsaneMetalSoldier
    @InsaneMetalSoldier Před 8 lety +190

    That moment when I realize this is not Computerphile o.0

    • @lazeran4900
      @lazeran4900 Před 8 lety +10

      +Juan Bonnett the moment when someone realise or deeply interiorise that the basic sciences are actually the thing that the modern technology comes from.

    • @NebulusVoid
      @NebulusVoid Před 8 lety +6

      +Lazeran that moment when you realise that this is topic is grey and could be found on either one

    • @kindlin
      @kindlin Před 6 lety +1

      Bandwidth isn't computerphile? With current technology there is a known maximum bandwidth that we could Mor's Law predict ourselves into a problem with, in a relatively short time frame. At that point laying more wire to fill an exponentially increasing demand isn't plausible, you need better technology with a higher bandwidth or better compression to send less data.
      This all seems pretty computer related, to me.

    • @unguidedone
      @unguidedone Před 5 lety

      i know.... i was like :0

    • @overlordalfredo
      @overlordalfredo Před 5 lety +1

      All he talks about is in fact rudimental Computer stuff.
      *You learn what bandwidth is and how it is “produced“ when you are learning any computer related job!*

  • @thisguy1ify
    @thisguy1ify Před 10 lety +3

    I really love the style of these short lectures. The "student" asks a very well scripted question (or at least it seems scripted) which allows for reflection from the viewer to then connect the dots. I personally feel this CZcams channel is the best at communicating often very complex scientific concepts to a very wide range of audience. Cheers!

  • @jessstuart7495
    @jessstuart7495 Před 7 lety +27

    A sine wave can convey three pieces of information. Amplitude, Phase, and Frequency. The 19kHz FM pilot tone used to decode stereo information (United States) is an example.
    You can think of turning a sine-wave on/off as multiplying the sine-wave by a windowing function that is 1 when the sine-wave is on, and 0 when the sine-wave is off. The windowing function has a frequency spectrum of its own, and this gets convolved with the sine-wave's spectrum in the frequency domain. A pure sine-wave's spectrum looks like two impulses (sharp spikes) at +f and -f. A rectangular (perfectly "square" pulse) window function's spectrum is a sinc (sin(x)/x) function. When the sinc spectrum gets convolved with the sine-wave's impulse spectrum, it copies, shifts, and divides by 2 the sinc spectrum around +f and -f. Negative frequencies arise from converting Real valued time-domain signals into their complex-frequency domain representation.
    Check out the Shannon-Hartley Theorem that relates maximum channel capacity to Channel Bandwidth and Signal-to-Noise ratio.

    • @rehoboth_farm
      @rehoboth_farm Před 4 lety +2

      I think you missed the point he was trying to convey.

    • @davecrupel2817
      @davecrupel2817 Před 4 lety +3

      That's not the *type* of information he is referring to.
      That is nothing more than the nature of the transmission. You need an oscilloscope to translate that.
      Hes talking about using that like morse code.

  • @Aemilindore
    @Aemilindore Před 5 lety +1

    You sir explained a whole lot of wireless communication to me in minutes! Thanks prof. Your students are so lucky to be taught by you! Please consider doing more videos on wireless communication. Yours will make a great channel.

  • @montlejohnbojangles8937
    @montlejohnbojangles8937 Před 7 lety +1

    This just cleared up a huge hole in my understanding of waves and bandwidth. I heart you guys lots.

  • @earthworm768
    @earthworm768 Před 7 lety +22

    I have to admit, I have never heard of the range on frequencies that are able to travel down the optical fiber to be the limiting factor. I was taught that it was the Group Velocity Dispersion that limited the data rate, as due to this effect the pulses spread out temporally (That is, the pulses duration continues to increases as the pulse travels down the fibre). This increase of pulse duration makes it so that if pulses are fired too quickly after each other, sometime down the fiber the pulses would spread into each other and you will lose your nice wave packets and hence your data.

    • @skardykats
      @skardykats Před 7 lety +4

      That is true. However he's talking about different types of limit. It is also strange that he talked about visible spectrum when fibre optics use only IR.

    • @ronaldderooij1774
      @ronaldderooij1774 Před 7 lety +3

      Well I too mostly understand what is explained, but not quite this time. He lost me at the point that he explained that if you switch a laser on and off, it is a superposition of waves and if you keep it on continuously, it isn't. I understand the Heisenberg uncertaintly principle, and I understand superposition, but I cannot understand what that has to do with it. I also understand the (unmentioned) Fourier analysis, but I cannot make one single image in my mind on what the difference is between switching a laser on/off and leaving it on continuously.

    • @skardykats
      @skardykats Před 7 lety +1

      Ronald de Rooij The thing that he said about continuous wave (CW) is true. It is almost never really exists in real world. I do a lot of EM simulation, and it is a real problem to simulate a CW. We use different kinds of tricks to suppress high frequency signals that permeates from starting the so called 'CW'. These high frequency signals are real problems in our frequency domain analysis.

    • @KaitharVideo
      @KaitharVideo Před 7 lety +1

      While I understand the argument being made in the video, it feels like he's contradicted himself. I was under the impression that individual photons represented a packet of energy of a single frequency... What he's saying suggests that a photon itself is a superposition of multiple frequencies?

    • @maggsgorilla
      @maggsgorilla Před 7 lety +3

      earthworm768 - actually group velocity dispersion (group delay in the radio world) means that different wavelengths travel through the fibre at different speeds and the frequency components arrive at different times which blurs the pulse edges. it can be partially corrected. it is still a function of bandwidth

  • @LynkedVideos
    @LynkedVideos Před 10 lety +8

    Why wasn't the term heterodyning used in this video? Bandwidth requirements become much more understandable, when the concept is explained. Two frequencies will combine to create both constructive and destructive frequencies. Heterodyning was demonstrated with the iPhone-based tone generators, but not clearly explained. If a 1000Hz tone is pulsed at 1Hz, the transmitter will occupy 2Hz from 999-1001Hz.
    Today's data networks use something called Dense Wave-division Multiplexing. We combine multiple frequencies often near 190THz with spacings of a mere 0.8nm, each channel representing 10Gbps. Prisms are readily available to combine up to 80 channels on a single pair of fibers, which translates to 800Gbps, or a Terabyte of raw data in 10 seconds.

    • @agerven
      @agerven Před 5 lety +3

      @Michael Hall: What you're talking about is the actual binary information that is transmitted. The video is concerned about the physical limits in transmitting information accross a fiber-optic cable. And mind you, as the professor clearly states, a mathematically true pulse requires an infinite amount of frequencies or otherwise an infinite amount of preparation and decay times to form. Fortunately quantummechanics comes to the rescue there giving us a bounded physical world i.s.o. a purely mathematical one. I really love that part.

  • @bobee123456
    @bobee123456 Před 9 lety

    Found this video really helpful, appreciate you guys taking the time to film and upload it

  • @memeswillneverdie
    @memeswillneverdie Před 9 měsíci

    You know I revisit this video as an audio engineer and it explains the basics of impulses, intermodulation distortion (kinda), it hints at the nyquist Shannon sampling theorem (in the sense that you need to decide the bandwidth you need which will define the sampling rate), the Fourier transform (all sounds are just a combination of different frequencies), digital clocking, pulse code modulation (in a very roundabout way in terms of thats the pulses hes on about).
    All of these things took me quite a while to fully grasp and he explained/eluded to them in the span of 10 ish mins, bravo.

  • @foreverofthestars4718
    @foreverofthestars4718 Před 8 lety +154

    I want to be in his class

    • @calmvolatility2787
      @calmvolatility2787 Před 3 lety +1

      you say that b/c you saw the bottle of scotch on the desk behind him LOL, that would be a fun class

    • @redshift1976
      @redshift1976 Před 3 lety

      No one is in his class.

  • @gl1500ctv
    @gl1500ctv Před 9 lety +43

    This reminds me of how they said CAT7 cable was going to be needed to handle the bandwidth of gigabit Ethernet and within a few years the engineers figured out how to do it over CAT5 cable with the right processing power and better noise reduction algorithms. Then wireless added new modulation schemes and multiplexing and jumped from 802.11b to 802.11n to 802.11ac. The lesson: don't tell an engineer there is a limit as they will find ways to exceed your limits.

    • @911gpd
      @911gpd Před 9 lety +3

      Stephen Furr I absolutely didn't get a clue of what you're talking about except the last sentence that I like very much and do agree with :)

    • @911gpd
      @911gpd Před 9 lety +4

      allen mathew Thanks :)

    • @colemarc
      @colemarc Před 8 lety +13

      +Stephen Furr Advancements in technology only push the speed near and near to the fundamental limits of the media. If the media is for example a CAT5 cable with a given noise floor you can only push so much information down the line (see Shannon theorem).

    • @AlexanderBollbach
      @AlexanderBollbach Před 7 lety

      here here

    • @deplorableamerican9451
      @deplorableamerican9451 Před 7 lety +1

      Stephen Furr there's a limit ;)

  • @ricma9710
    @ricma9710 Před 5 lety +1

    That frequency pulse was incredible, thank you professor Mike, it was very cool.

  • @BonjourHalloHello
    @BonjourHalloHello Před 9 lety +1

    A brilliant explanation, and really helpful for my A-Level Physics! Thanks.

  • @malango255
    @malango255 Před 9 lety +14

    Man I don't miss my 56k dial up days haha.

  • @EngineeringNS
    @EngineeringNS Před 8 lety +52

    Can't wait for 10TB/s speeds...

    • @NebulusVoid
      @NebulusVoid Před 8 lety

      +Engineering Nonsense I know right.

    • @madmatthew1
      @madmatthew1 Před 8 lety +1

      +Engineering Nonsense But that will need to be split through the whole population since we share fibre cables

    • @EngineeringNS
      @EngineeringNS Před 8 lety

      Matthew Lowe its not just one cable, under water, but networks. Right?

    • @madmatthew1
      @madmatthew1 Před 8 lety +2

      Yeah, I was going to say there will be thousands bundled up, but I doubt there will be enough to provide each household within a city with 10TB/s

    • @EngineeringNS
      @EngineeringNS Před 8 lety

      Matthew Lowe True

  • @ruelj2
    @ruelj2 Před 8 lety +1

    This is my favorite video of all sixty symbols!! Please make a video about Fournier's equations!!

  • @radoslawbiernacki
    @radoslawbiernacki Před 5 lety

    Sir, this is the most beautiful and concrete explanation of Quantum physic, Fourier Transformation and Information theory lectures in the whole universe!!!
    I'm a engineer and finally after all those years someone showed me how to explain connections in all of those laws using one simple example!. This really worked for me!!! Thank you!!

  • @dromeiro
    @dromeiro Před 8 lety +5

    The number of "beatings" per second its equal to the difference between the two frequencies in hertz. So, 1000Hz and 1001Hz: 1Hz difference, or one beating per second. 1000Hz and 1002Hz: 2Hz difference, or two beatings per second.

    • @asifinamdar7913
      @asifinamdar7913 Před 8 lety +1

      When he played two tones of different frequencies, superposition of two signals took place. It will result into wave/signal of different frequency. Therefore, that resulting frequency will be LCM of the two original frequencies.

  • @Crazy_Diamond_75
    @Crazy_Diamond_75 Před 9 lety +153

    1TB in a few hundredths of a second?!?! JFC

    • @then33k4
      @then33k4 Před 9 lety +17

      JFC is a Mexican fast food chain.. right.. right ?

    • @JM-cv7nv
      @JM-cv7nv Před 9 lety +23

      AMGwtfBBQsauce In the future, that might seem like a small amount. In the 1900's, one MB used to be incomprehensibly big.

    • @Crazy_Diamond_75
      @Crazy_Diamond_75 Před 9 lety +8

      Jojo Mcguire Which decade are we talking about? Computers didn't even exist in 1900, but multi-gig hard drives were pretty standard by 2000.

    • @classicsignofgivinguponaus3685
      @classicsignofgivinguponaus3685 Před 9 lety +16

      AMGwtfBBQsauce I think it's a typo and he meant 1990, however, even then 1 MB wasn't too big. The 80's now, that's a different story.

    • @Crazy_Diamond_75
      @Crazy_Diamond_75 Před 9 lety +21

      Ashley Wyatt "Why would we need any more than 50KB of storage?"

  • @onthelongestroad
    @onthelongestroad Před 10 lety

    Fascinating - it actually makes sense to me the way you explained it. Thanks, Professor (and Brady of course)!

  • @coreytk
    @coreytk Před 10 lety

    Excellent video, learned a lot! The way the delta f delta t formula presented in the beginning was tied in at the end to drive the point home really made everything make even more sense, thanks for the great video!

  • @tjpld
    @tjpld Před 10 lety +8

    So that would be around 80 Tbps or 80.000 Gbps. Should be enough for future applications.
    Looks like some people even managed to almost reach the maximum.
    www.techspot.com/news/52066-hollow-fiber-optic-cable-tops-73tbps-promises-near-light-speeds.html
    We really need fiber optical cables everywhere and into every building. You'd only have to upgrade the terminals and recievers to get higher bandwidths in the future.

  • @sheet-son
    @sheet-son Před 10 lety +161

    More cables. Problem solved. Pay me billions.

    • @KatzRool
      @KatzRool Před 10 lety +13

      good jorb. *clap*..*clap*..*clap*...

    • @Vesperidone
      @Vesperidone Před 9 lety +11

      But you'd need the receivers to process the additional cables and compile it all together, which may not actually save time.

    • @BlackMasterRoshi
      @BlackMasterRoshi Před 9 lety +12

      Stuart Hull Gamma rays are ionizing radiation so they just smash into atoms and knock electrons off them, often changing the properties of the atoms in the process.
      It would not be easy to find anything like an optic cable to shove them down. Radio waves have much longer wavelengths and they just pass through many substances or get absorbed. The range we have to work with for fiber optics is pretty much infra red through lower ultra violet.

    • @ShamelessHorse
      @ShamelessHorse Před 9 lety

      Mexicano President
      Many Jobs!

    • @itsiwhatitsi
      @itsiwhatitsi Před 9 lety +1

      Give Billions to the Bat-Cat!!

  • @nickmagrick7702
    @nickmagrick7702 Před 5 lety +1

    2:04 a resonance. A pattern of the waves complimenting each other and getting stronger, or canceling out and making the noise more fuzzy. Like pushing your legs on a swing set

  • @TheBandScanner
    @TheBandScanner Před 10 lety

    One of the best videos I've seen from this channel.

  • @abhiaerospace
    @abhiaerospace Před 8 lety +7

    sir what was that app for different frequency generation ? i need it.

    • @MrMamanDon
      @MrMamanDon Před 2 lety

      Search for frequency genrator apps on play store or app store. To replicate that pulsing effect, choose a stable frequency let's say 1khz and then play 1.01 khz in other phone.

  • @egv2271
    @egv2271 Před 9 lety +86

    I'm pretty happy with 100TB a sec...

    • @volodyanarchist
      @volodyanarchist Před 9 lety +18

      10 years ago you would be very happy with 56 Kib per second. And in 10 years, once high definition holographic VR movies will start including DNA and psychological information of each character allowing you to create alternative plots as you go and you will try to download something like this, 100 TiB per second might look like a slow connection.

    • @darrenpope755
      @darrenpope755 Před 9 lety +8

      VolodyA! V Anarhist Time for you to write a book. I bet that came off the top of your head, didn't it? Run with it! I also noticed your use of the tebibyte symbol... while I applaud your effort, I don't think it will catch on.

    • @volodyanarchist
      @volodyanarchist Před 9 lety +5

      )))
      About TiB... i don't do that to "catch on", but because otherwise it's ambigous.

    • @darrenpope755
      @darrenpope755 Před 9 lety +1

      VolodyA! V Anarhist As you already know TiB = 1024^4 and TB= 1000^4 bytes... I think the public has spoken with the use of kilo, mega, giga and tera. The only ambiguity would be the public's clear ignorance of the difference and why it's important. That's why I was saying it won't catch on... the general public won't start saying the right thing. But, I applaud your effort to be exact!

    • @GraveUypo
      @GraveUypo Před 9 lety +3

      VolodyA! V Anarhist you probably meant 20 years ago. 10 years ago was 2005! some of us already had megabyte connections back then (i think i was at 800kbps)

  • @kyler133
    @kyler133 Před 10 lety

    Great video. I watched it three times in a row to make sure I absorbed every bit of precious information. This video gives you an idea of what our future technologies could be capable of and when we may begin seeing the limitations of fiber and looking to bring about a new way of transmitting data.

  • @p.s.design4338
    @p.s.design4338 Před 6 lety

    this Prof's explanation is really enjoyable.

  • @mhdadk
    @mhdadk Před 9 lety +4

    What's the app called?

  • @chillsahoy2640
    @chillsahoy2640 Před 8 lety +4

    Talking about photons got me thinking. What is the smallest wavelength difference that two different photons could have? I understand that each photon has a particular energy, determined by its wavelength, so that a photon can have wavelength x, and the next highest energy photon will have wavelength x-n. But what is the value for n? Is it the Plank length?

    • @CalculatedRiskAK
      @CalculatedRiskAK Před 8 lety +4

      +E “Anonymous Nerdfighter” Hernandez The smallest wavelength difference, I would assume, would be one Planck Length. The reason is because the Planck Length is the smallest discrete distance that can be traveled and measured in the universe, so it would be impossible for two wavelengths of light to differ by any less than that.

  • @billpiper795
    @billpiper795 Před 6 lety

    Fascinating. I love the quantum mechanics tie-in to the bandwidth discussion.

  • @Romenadan
    @Romenadan Před 10 lety

    Absolutely fantastic video! This is something I had wondered about for a long time! I didn't realize the uncertainty principle included the pair of energy and timing of a photon, which really is key to understanding why the range of frequencies needed to turn the sine to a square increases as pulsewidth decreases.

  • @dddmemaybe
    @dddmemaybe Před 9 lety +11

    We've come so far that I can stream videos in quality higher than my eyes can percept, and loaded faster than I could watch them. :D Computers might as well be magic from my understanding of them.

  • @user-zi8jn1go8k
    @user-zi8jn1go8k Před 8 lety +17

    So if we have let's say a green laser and switch it on and off quickly it shuoldn't be a single wavelength anymore, right? Does it mean that if we put a filter in front of laser, that will allow only a green light to pass we will se the laser only when it is switched on constantly? And if we start to switch it on/off what would we see? No light at all? Or constant light? This idea seems weird to me :\

    • @rossinator98
      @rossinator98 Před 8 lety +1

      +Роман Плетнев I like your thinking. I imagine the time we would see the laser as "on" would decrease as we decreased the number of frequencies allowed through the filter. As we decrease the frequencies allowed through it essentially becomes opaque which makes sense as then the time we perceive the laser as on would be zero. So the delta t (time of perceived pulse) through the filter is proportional to delta f of the filter (i.e range of frequencies allowed through)? No idea, just speculating...

    • @Maric18
      @Maric18 Před 8 lety

      +Роман Плетнев since the filter can physically not be that precise, you would only cut the end and the beginning of each pulse. if you switch fast enough, the time until it is close enough to your target frequency would be longer than the length of the pulse, if you know what i mean.
      If the totally unrelated mental image helps, think of the sound an organ makes if it turns on while you are pressing the keys (it is one of my favourite sounds :D)

    • @lcbp2009
      @lcbp2009 Před 8 lety +10

      +Роман Плетнев
      +Ross Sullivan
      +Maric
      I understand your confusion, it's because the vid explain it poorly. The vid is only 11 min it cannot cover everything of a 2 h class on the subject.
      Here the explanation: every signal that is not pure can be written as a sum of a pure signal, when I say pure I mean it contains only 1 frequency, and it means the signal can be drawn as a perfect sinusoide.
      Now when you switch on a off periodically the green laser, if you look at the signal as a whole you will see (if for example the period is 1s) 1s there is a pure sinusoide then 1s there is nothing, and so on until you decide to stop it. It is then impossible to mathematically describe the whole signal with one and only one frequency (the frequency of the green laser). Only by using the sum of many frequency you can mathematically reconstruct the whole signal.
      In other word, by using a lot of different frequency, and add them together you can achieve the same result as if you were turning on and off the laser. Hence the "it contains a lot of different frequency".
      As for how can adding different frequency can result in total darkness (equivalent to when you turn off the laser) you can look into interference.
      So to answer your question if the signal was obtained by turning on and off then you will see nothin, but if the signal was obtained by the addition of many frequency, you will filter the green light and obtain all the other.
      For more info look into Fourier series.

    • @LouSaydus
      @LouSaydus Před 7 lety +1

      Роман Плетнев same light but with just less energy because you filtered some of it off

    • @janetjack9472
      @janetjack9472 Před 6 lety

      And what in case we are capable of sending a single photon. We put a filter. And what does even very long lasting sine wave of light freq mean? That photons come in an extremely ordered fashion one after another without any differences in space gaps between them in a straight path?

  • @papa515
    @papa515 Před 10 lety

    Brilliant - Of all the explanations, I've seen, this is the best explanation of bandwidth.

  • @onecanina
    @onecanina Před 10 lety

    Brady, don't forget the sixty symbols channel. I love them all but this is my favorite and you don't t upload enough here!

  • @AllTreble
    @AllTreble Před 9 lety +6

    I calculated his answer a bit more so its easier to understand.
    In terms of data transfer the ultimate limit you can send is about 50,000,000 Mbyte/sec or 400,000,000 Mbit/sec in a fiber lika that (from blue light to red light)

  • @arnabbiswasalsodeep
    @arnabbiswasalsodeep Před 10 lety +6

    What's the name of the app

  • @ruadeil_zabelin
    @ruadeil_zabelin Před 10 lety

    Don't let it get to your head. I love watching your (and Brady's) video's. Even if it's about a field I already have knowledge about (like in this case), it's still interesting to watch. Keep it up :) Love it.

  • @agerven
    @agerven Před 5 lety

    Wow, certainly entertaining and covering some essentials of physics.
    As expected, in the end, the numbers prof. Merrifield comes up with are related to the actual transmissive boundary conditions of the fiber. In this case conditions that allow light in the optical spectrum to pass without significant damping through the cable.
    I love it when he gets so enthousiastic that he applies the theoretical fourier analysis and even quantummechanics to the question. Of course he's right there, very capable man, but then you're talking about the absolute theoretical limits in general. And whether one or the other is true and what 'true' actually means is subject to an endless discussion that I sometimes happily dive into but in general constraint myself from.
    So yes, great stuff this video and sure to rewatch it a number of times!

  • @GamePhysics
    @GamePhysics Před 8 lety +8

    Terabytes in milliseconds you say? That's amazing.

    • @GamePhysics
      @GamePhysics Před 8 lety

      KaneLongTroy If we assume 1tb in a millisecond, that will still be done in 0,002 seconds. That's pretty fast.

    • @SkyLake101
      @SkyLake101 Před 8 lety

      +GamePhysics Regular computers won't be able to process that much of speed

  • @RealBenAnderson
    @RealBenAnderson Před 8 lety +19

    As a big fan of your videos and someone who normally has no problem understanding them, I have to admit none of this made any sense to me. I would greatly appreciate it if you could make another video explaining this better. I know you have lots of videos to make but this seemed interesting but was really not explained well in my opinion, so if you get a chance I would love an opportunity to actually understand what he is talking about here.

    • @theInternet633
      @theInternet633 Před 7 lety +1

      Yeah normally i understand everything pretty well too but this time i really struggled to understand anything of substance the first time watching. By now i only understand the first part of the video, where the delta f * delta t = 1 formula comes from.

    • @panzach
      @panzach Před 5 lety +4

      (1) The speed of your fiber connection is how much information can travel through
      (2) Information is 1s and 0s
      (3) "1" and "0" are basically "pulse" and "no pulse")
      (4) The shorter in duration the pulses the more pulses can travel through your fiber within a given period of time
      (5) A short (duration) pulse can only be created by combining loooots of waves of different frequencies
      (6) There is a limitation on what range of frequencies (bandwidth) your fiber can support
      (7) Since the range of frequencies is limited, the duration of the supported pulses is also limited, because of (5)

  • @johnclavis
    @johnclavis Před 10 lety

    I understood just about all of that! Thanks very much for a really interesting video!

  • @guymartin1949
    @guymartin1949 Před 10 lety

    I learned something new! What a fantastic explanation. I had no idea that optical communications relied on the wave component of light to transmit information. Thank you so much Professor Merrifield. I absolutely love watching your videos. Don't be discouraged by negative comments. You can't please everyone and the people you do reach are very grateful for sharing your knowledge with us.

  • @Majinant
    @Majinant Před 7 lety +8

    Thanks for freaking out my kitten.

  • @grrr1351
    @grrr1351 Před 7 lety +3

    Anybody else love those pulses instead of get annoyed?

  • @DavidHager1
    @DavidHager1 Před 10 lety

    Awesome explanation and really interesting.

  • @peterreid3077
    @peterreid3077 Před 7 lety

    Thank you Professor - never really understood how Bandwidth limits were arrived at - until now that is!

  • @EvanBoyar
    @EvanBoyar Před 9 lety +3

    You actually could encode information in an unchanging sine wave; you could encode it in the exact frequency. Let's say I wanted to encode the word "it". If you break "it" down into ASCII, that's 0x69, 0x74 (in hex), or 0110100101110100 (squished together in binary), depending on how you decide to do it. Anyway that translates to the number 26996 in decimal. So, if you wanted, you could send out a tone at 26996 Hz. If another person listened to the signal and figured out what frequency it was (easy with computers!), they could decode that number into "it"! But yeah, this is obviously a silly idea. Just having some fun!

    • @JavierRuizGonzalez
      @JavierRuizGonzalez Před 9 lety +1

      Well, there is a problem with the "easy with computers" part. So far with the word "it" we are outside the frequency range of digital audio, so you will need special hardware to digitize the incoming 26996 Hz signal.
      And "it" is a very short word.
      I'll let you calculate the frequency of the word "information" with your system, but I guess we would in the 10^27 Hz range...
      By the way, an unchanging sine wave has to be infinite in time, to be unchanging. Otherwise it'll contain other frequencies.
      As you said, having some fun.

    • @saltyman7888
      @saltyman7888 Před 9 lety

      There is also the problem of having the different peaks and valleys of different frequencies smearing together and also losing the information.

  • @Bassotronics
    @Bassotronics Před 8 lety +26

    11:22 = O_o
    I need that internet speed!

    • @axiezimmah
      @axiezimmah Před 7 lety +3

      your computer won't be able to handle it.

    • @nmarbletoe8210
      @nmarbletoe8210 Před 7 lety +3

      i wonder if it would melt the fiber

    • @PongoXBongo
      @PongoXBongo Před 7 lety +1

      Those crazy levels of speed are more commonly found in trans-oceanic cables, where billions of people's bits are going over a single bunch of fibers (like a shared cable internet connection on steroids).

    • @PongoXBongo
      @PongoXBongo Před 7 lety +1

      G4mm4G0bl1n I never said it was a single fiber. I said "cable" and "bunch of fibers". Those cables are massive bunches of fibers.
      My point was that the only real need for anywhere near theoretical single fiber bandwidth is in those transoceanic fibers. No home or business network, metro net, ISP, etc. needs that at this point.

    • @PongoXBongo
      @PongoXBongo Před 7 lety

      G4mm4G0bl1n Not at all. I specifically said "at this point" not "never". As long as LANs are capped at 1 maybe 10 Gbps, WANs need not be faster. Will the need be there soon enough, of course. But not today.

  • @KieronMiddleton
    @KieronMiddleton Před 6 lety

    That's my next physics lesson plan sorted..thanks SixtySymbols!

  • @problem5279
    @problem5279 Před 4 lety

    Really an eye opener, to understand what Shannon's bandwidth really meant. Thank you

  • @XxXKi11erXxX
    @XxXKi11erXxX Před 9 lety +4

    you forgot about modulation,
    if you use QAM 65536 you would have 16 times the Data conveyed, so you would end up at about 1600TB/s which is more than enough

  • @davecrupel2817
    @davecrupel2817 Před 8 lety +3

    7:22 GIF

  • @plantera07
    @plantera07 Před 9 lety

    Professor Merrifield is the best. I could listen to him all day.

  • @ludbrooks
    @ludbrooks Před 10 lety +1

    As a non-physicist I was doing great for the first 4.5 mins and then it all went! However I still love watching these videos of Brady's in the hope that I will start understanding eventually. Still envious of how Brady seems to understand so much as shown by his responses. I am beginning to think he no longer represents the "ordinary" person and so would like to volunteer my services for future videos!

  • @jaydunsmore050897
    @jaydunsmore050897 Před 9 lety +3

    and im stick with 5 down and 0.85 up :(

  • @luckyyuri
    @luckyyuri Před 8 lety +3

    10:22 that's exactly how i proceed when someone asks me what's the capital of france or something...

  • @JurisKankalis
    @JurisKankalis Před 6 lety

    Great and thorough explanation. Kuddos!

  • @GetOutsideYourself
    @GetOutsideYourself Před 10 lety

    Very cool explanation. I love everyday applications of quantum principles. The whole video I was wondering if he was going to get to the absolute limit of fiber. Glad you pinned him down in the end.

  • @thrael3
    @thrael3 Před 9 lety +4

    frequency limit =/= information limit because you can modulate amplitude. i.e. each spike may have different height and contribute to several bits without pushing frequency limit.

    • @aigarius
      @aigarius Před 6 lety +1

      Information limit is reached when spikes as just barely high enought to be detectable as something different from zero. Any higher than that and you are wasting time that the spike needs to climb and then fall again.

  • @lumpyfishgravy
    @lumpyfishgravy Před 7 lety +9

    There is no such thing as DC.

    • @jessstuart7495
      @jessstuart7495 Před 7 lety +6

      If we only had infinite time.

    • @lumpyfishgravy
      @lumpyfishgravy Před 7 lety +1

      Correct!

    • @Ritefita
      @Ritefita Před 7 lety

      very interesting. Can you tell more about it?
      Do you mean a light-speed electrons movement?
      a simple wire faster than optical? then why? whaaaaaa ????

    • @lumpyfishgravy
      @lumpyfishgravy Před 7 lety +1

      DC is zero frequency. A signal that is DC never changes. But the universe has only finite time, therefore the signal can only be DC if we make assumptions about its border conditions at the beginning and end of time.

    • @Ritefita
      @Ritefita Před 7 lety

      Mike Page
      no, i didnt)
      DC is undestandable.
      never changing dc is not information.
      the universe and time is not understandable.
      if you want infinite, never changing, dc
      then you just need an infinite energy for this useless circuit.
      wtf

  • @wknight8111
    @wknight8111 Před 5 lety

    I kept expecting them to talk about Fourier series and showing how waves of different frequencies can be added together to form square waves and whatever, so it was fun to see him take a different approach. For modern fiber optics or other transmissions with huge bandwidth needs, it's more likely that they would multiplex multiple slower streams together than to try to smoosh everything into a single stream with femto-second square wave pulses.

    • @tedarcher9120
      @tedarcher9120 Před rokem

      They don't use square pulses, they shift sine phase one or the other way and use different pieces of sine wave to code 1 and 0. Square pulses will just stretch on the way because they have so many different frequencies

  • @ChrisWalshZX
    @ChrisWalshZX Před 7 lety

    A great insight into quantum uncertainty from particle-wave duality.

  • @Schwuuuuup
    @Schwuuuuup Před 7 lety +5

    this must be the most confusing explanation on that topic. He must be related to my old Math teacher who could explain things only to those who already knew it all... :-/

  • @KnDoy
    @KnDoy Před 9 lety +5

    I get 5 mbps -__-

    • @gnagarn87
      @gnagarn87 Před 9 lety +1

      Are you sure that you don't have a DSL connection?
      Considering the fact that the slowest speed i can get with fiber optic connection is 10 down and 5 up makes me wonder..
      I can get, depending on the speed/plan you pick, anything from 10Mbit/s and all the way up to 1Gbit/s both up and down, for a fairly low cost.
      I currently have 100Mbit/s and pay about $45/month (USD).

    • @Mrfailstandstil
      @Mrfailstandstil Před 9 lety

      Gnagarn
      100 mbit/s in USA or the world, dl and ul???

    • @zinqtable1092
      @zinqtable1092 Před 6 lety

      750Kb/s keep whining

  • @clancywiggum3198
    @clancywiggum3198 Před 7 lety

    Have they tested this? I'm curious how this is resolved if you generate a pulse shorter than a fibre cable can handle, since the pulse of light isn't generated within the cable I don't see any reason why you can't make a pulse shorter than the 1 femtosecond limit, but what happens to the pulse when you put it into the cable? Does it lengthen as the frequency range is pinned down and your certainty about its frequency increases (since you know it fits down the cable), or does it just not go through at all? Or something else entirely?

  • @jesuschal3802
    @jesuschal3802 Před 4 lety

    Extremely interesting! Somehow it reminds me the diffraction phenomena if delta-t were the width of the slit.

  • @megadeathx
    @megadeathx Před 8 lety +8

    This is the worst explanation I've ever heard on this channel.

    • @HughPryor
      @HughPryor Před 5 lety

      I think the full explanation would take many times longer... I did watch another video explaining the same concept only marginally better - probably minutephysics...

  • @EDoyl
    @EDoyl Před 5 lety

    so can the wavelengths making up the signal from a laser being turned on and off be separated out? If I could flash a normal red HeNe laser pointer quickly, directed at some sort of clever optics, could I see some blue light out the other end?

  • @darkercheese
    @darkercheese Před 10 lety +1

    Thanks! These technicalities are why I love science.

  • @hoerbschmidt618
    @hoerbschmidt618 Před 4 lety

    That was a great explanation. Thank you very much!
    Best regards from Germany :-)

  • @ericsbuds
    @ericsbuds Před 10 lety

    awesome video. loved the topic.

  • @MDMAx
    @MDMAx Před 5 lety

    Wooow, I never knew about this phenomenon of frequency shift before! Makes so much sense! It actually corresponds to the drawing. I've never associated a superposition diagram to the representation of the visible spectrum at the beginning of it. It doesn't pulse from immediately 0 to 1. It goes through 0.01Hz beforehand! Can you believe that just because you see color, you see a chaotic bombardment of tiny invisible quanta in a perpetual interaction comming in and out of existence.

  • @onqproductions
    @onqproductions Před 10 lety

    That was awesome. Great job.

  • @bazoo513
    @bazoo513 Před 4 lety

    A short lecture on various kinds of modulation that look as if they beat the Nyquist limit would be a nice addition to this.

  • @arturzathas499
    @arturzathas499 Před 6 lety

    along with numberphile this is possibly the best channel in the entire net

  • @Souraneel
    @Souraneel Před 10 lety

    Thank you Prof Merrifield and Sixty Symbols. This is a very complicated topic I couldn't get my head around as I find it hard to understand the structure of a wave.

  • @bigboam
    @bigboam Před 10 lety

    Learned something new today. Good video.

  • @Archiekunst
    @Archiekunst Před 8 lety +2

    Mike Merrifield! Best teacher!

  • @RaminHonary
    @RaminHonary Před 10 lety +1

    I wish he had mentioned Fourier transforms, or shown how a time-domain graph can be converted to a frequency-domain graph because that is the equation you use to figure out which freqncys are produced when you create a wave that isn't sinusoidal. When you look at the freqncy domain you can see the stripe or "band" of freqncys needed to recreate the time-domain graph and you can then impose the band of freqncys that fibre-optics are physically able to carry to see the actual "width of the band."

  • @slinkytreekreeper
    @slinkytreekreeper Před 10 lety

    That was fascinating stuff, thankyou!

  • @Kd8OUR
    @Kd8OUR Před 10 lety

    I do radio as a hobby and this is a great video.

  • @Logarithm906
    @Logarithm906 Před 10 lety

    It's brilliantly explained. He starts with the beats that happen when two waves of different frequency superposition against each other (with a handy graph showing it beating in real time). He then draws an "infinite" sine wave and a pulse.
    You can clearly see that the pulse has tails, these tails that go to zero which is clear evidence that something other than the sine wave (like another frequency) is affecting the wave.
    A pure sine wave would just stop with no tails.

  • @CBEnoddyy
    @CBEnoddyy Před 7 lety

    Great video. So my question is, not counting any limiting factors of the medium needed to transmit a frequency. Is there a maximum range, therefore a maximum bandwidth?

  • @Jahooba
    @Jahooba Před 10 lety

    Fascinating!

  • @shirinbas
    @shirinbas Před 3 lety

    What a masterful description of the uncertainty principle

  • @ZeZapatiste
    @ZeZapatiste Před 10 lety

    Extremely interesting. Thanks.