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t1_j9110bn wrote

>The most common complaint is that an atom can only absorb very specific wavelengths, but light of all wavelengths is slowed down by materials

Yeah, but not slowed at the same rate (dispersion), which is where I think quantum treatment of the system may be more insightful. Truth is that there is a fundamental problem of trying to account for everything on the very small scale (scattering, absorption, phonon interactions etc.) to match observations on the large scale ( "simple" intensity and spectral measurements, maybe with a clock).

It's like having a large container of 100+ tennis balls, and then trying to predict where they all land if the container is flipped. I think it's unfair to dismiss the insights of the dynamics of a single tennis ball, but clearly it's not enough to predict how the group collectively behaves.

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