Honestly, the "HF physics is black magic" trope has made me numb to the phantastical contraptions. I appreciate when they look cool, like esoteric orgon wave radiators.
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Small note of clarification. HF in a radio frequency (RF) context actually refers to what we would now consider fairly low frequencies between 3 and 30mhz where wavelengths are in the tens of meters. The black magic is mostly in UHF AND microwave regions where wavelengths start to measure closer to the size of circuit elements.
Although I have also heard it said “RF physics is black magic” to cover all the bases
Yes, radio found out naming is hard before software did, in very old times there was High Frequency (HF), but then circuits got fast enough to go higher, oops, ok no problem, let's call the new frequencies Very High Frequency (VHF) whew that was close, but wait they got even faster! Ugh! Ok let's call the new frequencies Ultra High Frequency (UHF), but wait, we're still not in the Ghz range yet! Thankfully they did not keep going to Super Super Mega Ultra High Frequency.
3–30 Hz Extremely low frequency
30–300 Hz Super low frequency
300–3000 Hz Ultra low frequency
3–30 kHz Very low frequency
30–300 kHz Low frequency
300 kHz – 3 MHz Medium frequency
3–30 MHz High frequency
30–300 MHz Very high frequency
300 MHz – 3 GHz Ultra high frequency
3-30 GHz Super high frequency
30–300 GHz Extremely high frequency
300 GHz – 3 THz Tremendously high frequency
They should have started adopting olive size factors.
After Ultra High, we could have had Jumbo, Colossal, Super Colossal. and Mammoth frequency ranges.
Not to be confused with Colossal wavelengths, which is what we could have used if we need to fiddle around below Extremely Low frequencies..
So you've heard of USB?
Television resolutions appear to be on the same naming path.
Oh, they're much worse[1]. Is 4k 3840x2160 or 4096x2160? That's right, it's both! And 4096x2048! And 4096x4096! And about half a dozen other resolutions, many of which have no dimension of 4000 or 4096 pixels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_display_resolut...
Uhm.. Super High Frequency (SHF) and Extremely High Frequency (EHF) would like to have a word.
Though yes in my experience, at those frequencies people stop using ITU designations, and switch to IEEE (S,C,X-band etc).
Ahaha that's even better, I had no idea, love it!
Sky High Frequency
AFAIK, the black magic factor is much higher for HF electronics than for HF mechanics. It's at least partially because you can build more complex systems with HF electronics. The other difference is that high frequency EM oscillations easily radiate energy in the form of photons, while high energy mechanical oscillations radiate nothing for practical purposes (at least in vacuum), gravity waves if you're being pedantic.