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- Light is a transverse, electromagnetic wave that can be seen by the typical human. The wave nature of light was first illustrated through experiments on diffraction and interference. Like all electromagnetic waves, light can travel through a vacuum. The transverse nature of light can be demonstrated through polarization.
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May 24, 2024 · We know that light is a wave based on how it behaves – it exhibits the same properties of other waves we have examined – it interferes with itself, it follows an inverse-square law for intensity (brightness), and so on.
We might not have unified electrodynamics until 1865, but we've known light was a wave since the original double-slit experiment in 1801.
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- The Science Asylum
Currently light is thought of both as a wave and being made up of particles (photons), because as Robert mentioned in his answer, certain phenomena require modelling light as a wave to explain (interference, diffraction etc.), and others require photons (such as the photo-electric effect).
If light is a particle, then why does it refract when travelling from one medium to another? And if light is a wave, then why does it dislodge electrons ? But all behavior of light can be explained by combining the two models: light behaves like particles and light behaves like waves.
Nov 3, 2013 · Isaac Newton was pretty convinced that light was made out of a stream of particles, which he called corpuscles. At roughly the same time, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and astronomer, had a competing theory: that light was made up of waves.
Light behaves as a wave - it undergoes reflection, refraction, and diffraction just like any wave would. Yet there is still more reason to believe in the wavelike nature of light. Continue with Lesson 1 to learn about more behaviors that could never be explained by a strictly particle-view of light.
Light is a transverse, electromagnetic wave that can be seen by the typical human. The wave nature of light was first illustrated through experiments on diffraction and interference . Like all electromagnetic waves, light can travel through a vacuum.