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Transverse wave
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- Mathematics and experiments show that light is a transverse wave – the electric and magnetic field vectors point in directions that are perpendicular to the direction of motion of the light wave (and as it turns out, they also rare always perpendicular to each other).
17 hours ago · According to Sapienza, this isn't the right question to be asking. "Light is not sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave," he said. "It is always both a wave and a particle. It's just that we ...
May 24, 2024 · When we look at a single point light source, the farther away it is, the flatter the light wavefronts will be when they reach us. When the source is very far away (e.g. the sun), then the wavefronts are essentially flat.
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Huygens' theory of light refraction, based on the concept of the wave-like nature of light, held that the velocity of light in any substance was inversely proportion to its refractive index. In other words, Huygens postulated that the more light was \"bent\" or refracted by a substance, the slower it would move while traversing across that substanc...
Despite the highly regarded reputation of Sir Isaac Newton, a number of prominent scientists in the early 1700s did not agree with his corpuscular theory. Some argued that if light consisted of particles, then when two beams are crossed, some of the particles would collide with each other to produce a deviation in the light beams. Obviously, this i...
When a beam of light travels between two media having different refractive indices, the beam undergoes refraction, and changes direction when it passes from the first medium into the second. To determine whether the light beam is composed of waves or particles, a model for each can be devised to explain the phenomenon (Figure 3). According to Huyge...
Another excellent comparison of the two theories involves the differences that occur when light is reflected from a smooth, specular surface, such as a mirror. Wave theory speculates that a light source emits light waves that spread in all directions. Upon impacting a mirror, the waves are reflected according to the arrival angles, but with each wa...
The case for a particle nature for light is far stronger with regards to the reflection phenomenon than it is for refraction. Light emitted by a source, whether near or far, arrives at the mirror surface as a stream of particles, which bounce away or are reflected from the smooth surface. Because the particles are very tiny, a huge number are invol...
As he suspected, Young discovered that when the light waves from the second set of slits are spread (or diffracted), they meet each other and overlap. In some cases, the overlap combines the two waves exactly in step. However, in other cases, the light waves are combined either slightly or completely out of step with each other. Young found that wh...
The effects observed with polarized light were critical to the development of the concept that light consists of transverse waves having components that are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Each of the transverse components must have a specific orientation direction that enables it to either pass through or to be blocked by a polarize...
By the middle of the 1800s, scientists were becoming increasingly convinced of the wave-like character of light, but there remained one overbearing problem. Exactly what is light? A breakthrough was made when it was discovered by English physicist James Clerk Maxwell that all forms of electromagnetic radiation represent a continuous spectrum, and t...
What Lenard discovered confused and amazed him. For a specific wavelength of light (blue, for example), the electrons produced a constant potential, or a fixed amount of energy. Decreasing or increasing the amount of light produced a corresponding increase or decrease in the number of electrons liberated, but each still maintained the same energy. ...
In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that light might actually have some particle characteristics, regardless of the overwhelming evidence for a wave-like nature. In developing his quantum theory, Einstein suggested mathematically that electrons attached to atoms in a metal can absorb a specific quantity of light (first termed a quantum, but later c...
where E is the energy of a particle, m the mass, c is the speed of light, h is Planck's constant, and ν is the frequency. De Broglie's work, which relates the frequency of a wave to the energy and mass of a particle, was fundamental in the development of a new field that would ultimately be utilized to explain both the wave-like and particle-like n...
Waves have no preferred direction of propagation, so light that travels one path will, when reversed, follow the same path in the opposite direction. For this reason, it is not necessary to place an arrow-head on a ray in the above diagram.
Apr 10, 2022 · As light radiates away from its source, it spreads out in such a way that the energy per unit area (the amount of energy passing through one of the small squares) decreases as the square of the distance from its source.
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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Using a light source that emits a single wavelength of light (known as monochromatic, as it only has one wavelength of light present), the presence of interference fringes (patterns of dark and light spots) can be used to determine the flatness of a gap between two surfaces.
