Light

Key points: wave-particle duality; interference; temperature; inverse r squared law; luminosity; the electromagnetic spectrum

is a form of electromagnetic radiation, vibrating electric and magnetic fields moving through space. The Greek letter lambda () is used for the distance between crests, or the "wavelength".

Light as oscillating electric and magnetic fields

(From Nick Strobel Go to his site at www.astronomynotes.com for the updated and corrected version.)

Light is also a form of fundamental particle, called a photon. That is,

Light has "wave-particle duality"

Wave properties:

1. Interference

Many experiments show that light interferes with itself, a general property of waves. Here is an example with water waves, created at two spots. The picture shows how they add and subtract to create a complex pattern of ripples.This process is interference. To the right, an animation shows how the pattern changes as the distance between the two spots decreases. from U. Colorado, http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/schroedinger & Multimedia Physics, http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/mmedia/waves/ipd.html

How interference works: the black wave is the sum of the blue and brown ones. When the blue one is "in phase" with the brown, they interfere constructively and the black one is larger than either. When the blue one is "out of phase", they interfere destructively and cancel each other out; the black wave vanishes. (animation by G. Rieke).

Rather than drawing the curvy lines for a wave, sometimes we just draw a straight line for the wave crest seen from the top.

Interference in the wave-tops-as-lines view

Here is how the interference animation transfers to this version. (by G. Rieke).

We will show the kind of experiment used to see light interference after the discussion of diffraction and particle behavior.

2. Diffraction

$waterdiffraction.jpg (11423 bytes)$

When light encounters a barrier, such as a slit, its path bends and it can illuminate areas behind the slit that are larger than the width of the slit. Here are water waves at a breakwater (to left, from J. Alward,)

and diffraction in action to right.(animation by G. Rieke)

$animation of diffraction at a slit$

Particle properties:

1. Discrete energies

Photons have specific, discrete energies.

2. Isolated arrival times

Here is a movie of a comet, taken with a device that amplifies low light levels and shows every photon. Note the grainy appearance, due to the detection of individual photons from the sky. This appearance results directly from the discrete energy and isolated arrival times of the photons.

from Peter McCullough, http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~pmcc/comet/pinhole.html

Wave-Particle Duality:

If we shine photons one at a time into the box below, we will detect them as discrete particles, each one at a specific position against the back surface. However, if we collect a large number of photons, they will distribute themselves in the "dark" areas and avoid the "light" ones. The "dark" areas are where the positive wavefronts overlap from the two slits letting each photon through. Thus, they result from the combination of diffraction and interference. Perhaps the most curious part is that each photon must pass through both slits! This experiment is called "Young's fringes" after the first scientist to do it.

Animation of interference through double slits

If you find this experiment troublesome -- well, so does everyone else

Electromagnetic Spectrum:

With changing wavelength, short wavelength to long wavelength, we go from:

gamma-rays => x-rays => ultraviolet => visible => infrared => microwave => radio

(A nanometer = nm is 10^-9 m)

(From Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope Project, http://praxis.pha.jhu.edu/.)

These are all forms of “light” or electromagnetic radiation.

Some Basic Properties:

The speed of light, c, is a universal constant

c = 3 x 10⁸ meters/sec or c = 3 x 10⁵ kilometers/sec

c = times

where is wavelength and is frequency. The frequency is the number of wave crests that pass by a given fixed point per second. From this equation, if we know the wavelength we can compute the frequency, or if we know the frequency we can compute the wavelength.

We call a particle of light a photon, so it travels at speed c, obeys the above relationship between wavelength and frequency and it also follows this relation:

E = h times

where E is energy, h is a constant called Planck’s constant and is frequency. Thus, if we know the wavelength or frequency, we can compute the energy.

Light properties are related to the temperature of the object emitting the light

Temperature measures the energy in motions of atoms.

The "Kelvin" temperature scale sets 0 at the lowest possible temperature, where the atomic motions are "stopped" (to the limits set by quantum mechanics). The speed of motion of molecules is proportional to the square root of T(Kelvin) divided by the mass of the molecules.