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In the July 14-20, 2007 Guadaljara Reporter, there was an article titled, “Lakeside Thieves’ ingenious tagging system targets homes’. It said the Chapala police department had been circulating a flyer showing the signs to look for on your house if you have been ‘tagged’ for potential theft. The diagram shows 16 images that are chalked or otherwise written on your house so that other thieves will know who to hit.

Today as I was locking my door, I noticed odd chalk marks on the concrete support beam. I have no idea what they mean but will find out. Maybe now, after 6 years, it might be time to put in an alarm that perhaps calls the police though they come by here at least twice a day. I erased the marks and looked up the signs to see if I could make sense of them. No luck so will have to ask around.

There are two likely candidates who did the marking, one a known thief who I let use my computer for email and he stole a $600 camera with cables but I got it back from his mother who didn’t seem to think it important that her 20 year old son is a thief. The other is a guy who lives in another town and made a veiled threat a couple of weeks ago. So do I make it an offensive or defensive alarm system?

I’m thinking an alarm tied in to the telephone and using a voice module that reports a crime. When someone enters and the alarm is going off, a circuit will call the police department and the voice module will playback the address 3 times in spanish to report the breakin..

But I also like the idea of castigating a thief with high voltage or something that would knock them out or injure them to the point they must leave. This in addition to the call to the police. I will figure something out..

Update as of 12/06/07 - Police in two towns don’t have a clue what it means, but a mexican friend says the I is supposed to be a T over an upside down small v. Thus, the meaning is ‘temprano no esta’, no one home in the mornings. This because I generally work all night and sleep til noon without answering my door whch might give the impression I’m not there.

Is an atom resonant with all other identical atoms?

I have asked this question many times and sought an answer which I have never found. If anyone knows an experiment that verifies or refutes it, please let me know.

Every atom vibrates at a specific frequency. Ignore isotopes and impurities which will alter the natural resonant frequency, here I refer to the natural frequency only.

When one oscillator is exactly resonant with another oscillator, the phase difference is 0 degrees. Phase covers 360 degrees and though the frequency of an oscillator might be exactly the same, the frequency wave must start and end at the same time to be resonant.

If they do not start and end at the same time per wave, they are not truly resonant.

My question is, “For a given pure atomic element, take silver as an example, is it resonant with ALL of the other pure atoms of silver worldwide?”

Or is there a phase difference (from 1-259 degrees) depending on a variety of ambient conditions? The animation shows two oscillating toroid’s which are 180 degrees out of phase.

Frequency Standards - “In Ramsey’s method the rf excitation field is divided into two spatially separated zones that are driven in phase, so that the atoms are first subjected to a short oscillatory field where a transition is initiated and then drift through the C field to a second region where another short oscillatory field induces a completion of the transition. The effect of this process, now called Ramsey interrogation, is to sharpen the resonance and substantially relax the requirements on the homogeneity of the C field. All primary atomic frequency standards now use this means of interrogation. While a variety of methods have been used to servo-control a local oscillator to the atomic resonance, most modern atomic standards now use square-wave modulation and digital processing to achieve the lock. In this method, the local oscillator spends a certain period on one side of the resonance where the signal amplitude is measured, and then is shifted to the other side of the line for a similar measurement. The difference between the amplitudes of these two signals is driven to zero by the servo-control system, thus assuring that the center of the resonance is at the midpoint between these two positions. This of course requires that the shape of the resonance be symmetric, a consideration that must be checked during evaluation of the accuracy of the standard.”

I did find a peculiar page which makes a statement that I think might be inaccurate when taking phase differences into account;

Atomic Frequency Standards - “One of the wonders of the quantum mechanics that governs the world of atoms is the fact that every atom in the universe is exactly the same as every other one. Of course, oxygen atoms are different from nitrogen atoms, and not even all oxygen atoms are the same, since some of them have an extra neutron — but when they are the same element and when they have the same number of neutrons they are absolutely identical. This means that if we could make a clock using atoms, it would be an absolute clock, the same everywhere.”

If this is true, that an atom is truly resonant (having no phase difference) with all other identical atoms on this world let alone in the universe, it opens the way to some fascinating new technologies which was my intent for asking the question in the first place.

It is interesting however, that atomic clocks taken into space or left running in space must be periodically recalibrated to again match their twins on the earth. Indicating a relationship with gravity.