Over thousands of years, dozens of the world’s most renowned scientists have debated a question that many still contemplate: what is light made of? From the Pythagorean studies of the ancient Greeks supporting that every visible article emits particles, to Aristotle’s claim that light travels similarly to waves in the ocean, what exactly lights consists of still remains “up in the air”. While both theories are correct in their own rights, the particle theory of light has proven more legitimate in its evidence.
According to the particle theory of light, light is composed of particles called photons and each photon has some energy associated with it, which depends on the frequency of light. A photon is a bundle of electromagnetic energy or the basic unit that makes up all light. Even though it is not strictly correct, it is hard not to think of a beam of light as a collection of little "light bullets" all strung together in a row. Although this is mainly focused on Einstein’s theory, Sir Isaac Newton's prism experiments and Corpuscular theory have been used as evidence that light travels as a shower of particles or photons, each proceeding in a straight line until it
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This became known as 'Huygens' Principle'. Huygens theory was the successful theory of light wave motion in three dimensions. Huygen, suggested that light wave peaks form surfaces like the layers of an onion. In a vacuum, or other mediums, the light waves are spheres, and these wave surfaces spread out as they travel at the speed of light. His theory explains why light shining through a pin hole or slit will spread out rather than going in a straight line. Huygens' principle lets you predict where a given wavefront will be in the future, if you have the knowledge of where the given wavefront is in the
5th Feb, 2014. Wolf, Johnathan. " The Spotlights." Wolf, Johnathan. AP Physics B. Barron’s:
He had produced an unknown ray being emitted from the tube that could pass through the paper. He found that this new ray would pass through most objects, casting shadows of solid substances. He first investigated with his hand and was surprised when he saw his bones. His discovery would open up an exciting field for doctors because now it was possible to stu...
“A new (but yet unproven) theory proposes that all matter—from the page of this book to the skin of a peach—consists of tiny loops of vibrating strings. String (or Superstring) Theory,
The amazing transformation the study of physics underwent in the two decades following the turn of the 20th century is a well-known story. Physicists, on the verge of declaring the physical world “understood”, discovered that existing theories failed to describe the behavior of the atom. In a very short time, a more fundamental theory of the ...
During the crisis of modern science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the postulates of early scientific discoveries had been refuted. In one of science’s most defining moments, an undisturbed photon of light was found to exhibit both wave-like and particulate qualities. The relationship between these two qualities would later be termed complementarity by Niels Bohr, one of the scientists at the forefront of this discovery. As Thomas S. Kuhn notes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “Before [the theory of quantum mechanics] was developed by Plank, Einstein, and others early in [the twentieth] century, physics texts taught that light was transverse wave motion” (12). So staggering was this discovery that in his autobiography, Albert Einstein recounts, “All my attempts to adapt the theoretical foundations of physics [to the new quantum knowns] failed completely. It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere upon which one could have been built.” Not surprisingly, this arrest of the fundamental postulates of classical physics sparked a reevaluation of the “world view” by the ...
In this experiment, Newton placed a second prism 5 or 6 yards away from the first. At first, when the light passed through the prisms, his results were the same as the first experiment. However, when the prisms were moved farther away from the wall onto which the light was being projected, the light projected from the prisms became white again. When they were moved even farther, the light became colored again, but the color scale was inverted from the original scale. According to the accepted theory of light, the second prism changed the color of the light projected onto the wall. Therefore, Newton’s results once again contradicted the accepted theory of light. He also rotated the prisms to test if this would have an effect on the light, but it did not. Due to these observations, Newton concluded that light was in fact a combination of all light on the spectrum of light, not just a mixture of light and
Throughout history many historians study and use written accounts from the past. William Bradford was one of the people they use.His life as a youth was very difficult. Having to deal with death of family members and his constant sickness. He became a believer and followed the Separatist of the Church. William Bradford was one of the passengers on the Mayflower.
The author tells of how waves are effected by quantum mechanic. He also discusses the fact that electromagnetic radiation, or photons, are actually particles and waves. He continues to discuss how matter particles are also matter, but because of their h bar, is so small, the effects are not seen. Green concludes the quantum mechanics discussion by talking about the uncertainty principle.Chapter 5: The need for a New Theory: General Relativity vs.
An impressive feat Sir Isaac Newton accomplished was the evolution of optics. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed light to be a simple entity, but Newton thought otherwise through his studies and building telescopes. It was thought that, “The idea that visual perception involves a medium somehow relating the beheld to the beholder is as old as ancient Greece,” (Darrigol 117). Isaac Newton challenged old ideas after an experiment with a prism and how it refracted light, as he saw this happen in a telescope where he saw the rings of colors distorting the image. This lea...
...ossessed with three dimensional attributes. The optical effect may be explained by the fact that the human eyes see an object from two viewpoints separated laterally by about six centimeters. The two views show slightly different spatial relationships between near and near distant objects and the visual process fuses these stereoscopic views to a single three dimensional impression. The same parallax view of an object may be experienced upon reflection of an object seen from a concave mirror." (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4229761.html).
Williams, B. 1999. A History of Light and Lighting. [online] Available at: http://www.mts.net/~william5/history/hol.htm [Accessed: 5 Jan 2014].
The theory of quantum mechanics has divided the atom into a number of fundamental sub-atomic particles. Although the physicist has shown that the atom is not a solid indivisible object, he has not been able to find a particle which does possess those qualities. Talk of particles, though, is misleading because the word suggests a material object. This is not the intention for the use of the word in quantum physics. Quantum particles are, instead, representations of the actions and reactions of forces at the sub-atomic level. In fact, physicists are less concerned with the search for a material particle underlying all physical objects and more interested in explaining how nature works. Quantum theory is the means that enables the physicist to express those explanations in a scientific way.
Throughout different experiments, scientists have discovered that light behaves as both a wave and a particle in different circumstances. The only way that all of the properties of light can be explained is through the idea of a wave-particle duality.
...here the electrons move and go. The photons from the light transport energy and hit the electron, which transfers energy to the electron but slows down the photon. At last, in the 1920’s scientists came up with the wave-particle duality. The wave-particle duality stated that light had both properties of a wave and properties of a particle at the same time (Tavolacci).
The question Thomas Young sought to resolve was whether light was made of a stream of particles or waves. Sir Isaac Newton, a strong proponent of the particle theory, showed that a white light beam passing through angled prisms would split into a spectrum at the first prism and become white light again when passed through the second prism. This proved the particle theory by disproving the wave theory, giving support to Newton’s corpuscular (particle) theory of light. However, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, disagreed with Newton's theory and argued tha...