DUALITY OF LIGHT
DUAL-NATURE OF LIGHT
From the very beginning we know that light is a wave. A wave
travels through a medium. But it was found that light can travel even through
vacuum or empty space. Before Einstein, scientists thought that “ether” is a
thing which is present everywhere in this universe, even in the empty space or
vacuum. That’s why light can travel through vacuum. But Einstein said that the
whole concept about ether is meaningless. Rather he proposed that light has a
dual-nature.
More specifically we can say that light behaves in two
different ways depending upon situations. Like in medium light behaves like
wave and in vacuum light behaves like particle. This is called the dual nature
of light.
WAVE NATURE
The wave nature of light says how light can bent. In 17th
century, Isaac Newton believed light is composed of a stream of corpuscles.
Then a Dutch physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens thought that light is
a wave vibrating in some sort of ether.
Some experiments like diffraction, interference, refraction
etc. proves that light has a wave property.
Wavelength is the parameter which can differentiate between
waves. In case of refraction we can differentiate mediums by their refractive
Indexes. The Refractive Index of every medium is different. It is defined as
n = c/v
Where, n= Refractive index of the medium
c=
speed of light in vacuum
v=
speed of the light in the medium
List of Refractive Index of some mediums –
MEDIUM
|
n
|
Vacuum
|
1
|
Air
|
1.00029
|
Water
|
1.33
|
Diamond
|
2.417
|
Amber
|
1.55
|
Ice
|
1.31
|
glass
|
1.52
|
Human lens
|
1.386-1.406
|
Germanium
|
4.05-4.01
|
PARTICLE NATURE
The fundamental particle of light is photon. We can define
light as a packet of photons. Photon is a mass less particle but it has energy.
It was first found by Albert Einstein in his Photoelectric effect experiment.
In this experiment a high energy photon strikes a metal surface and an electron
is ejected from the metal and the photon disappears. When the frequency of the
light increases, the speed of the electron being ejected, increases. This
experiment shows the particle nature of light.
The energy (E) of photon is defined as –
E = hf
Where, h = Plank’s constant
f =
frequency of the light
Quantum Theory: In Quantum theory light is taken as a
particle. It means we study the particle nature of light in quantum
physics. Light is an energy packet or
packet of photon. Particle nature of light explains how light travels in
straight lines or reflects.
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION : http://www.theincredibletruths.com/search/label/electromagnetic%20radiation
ETHER : http://www.theincredibletruths.com/search/label/ether
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