Light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength that is visible to the eye (visible light) or, in a technical or scientific context, the word is sometimes used to mean electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths.[1] The elementary particle that defines light is the photon. The three basic dimensions of light (i.e., all electromagnetic radiation) are:
Intensity, or alternatively amplitude, which is related to the perception of brightness of the light,
Frequency, or alternatively wavelength, perceived by humans as the color of the light, and
Polarization (angle of vibration), which is only weakly perceptible by humans under ordinary circumstances.
Due to its wave–particle duality, light can exhibit properties of both waves and particles. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.Speed of light
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 299 792 458 m/s (fixed by definition). Although this quantity is sometimes referred to as the "velocity of light", the word velocity refers to a vector quantity, which has a direction (and speed refers to the magnitude of the velocity vector).
The speed of light has been measured many times, by many physicists. Though Galileo attempted to measure the speed of light in the 1600s, the best early measurement in Europe was by Ole Rømer, a Danish physicist, in 1676. By observing the motions of Jupiter and one of its moons, Io, with a telescope, and noting discrepancies in the apparent period of Io's orbit, Rømer calculated that light takes about 18 minutes to traverse the diameter of Earth's orbit. If he had known the diameter of the orbit (which he did not) he would have deduced a speed of 227 000 km/s.
The first successful measurement of the speed of light in Europe using an earthbound apparatus was carried out by Hippolyte Fizeau in 1849. Fizeau directed a beam of light at a mirror several thousand metres away, and placed a rotating cog wheel in the path of the beam from the source to the mirror and back again. At a certain rate of rotation, the beam could pass through one gap in the wheel on the way out and the next gap on the way back. Knowing the distance to the mirror, the number of teeth on the wheel, and the rate of rotation, Fizeau measured the speed of light as 313 000 km/s.
Léon Foucault used rotating mirrors to obtain a value of 298 000 km/s in 1862. Albert A. Michelson conducted experiments on the speed of light from 1877 until his death in 1931. He refined Foucault's results in 1926 using improved rotating mirrors to measure the time it took light to make a round trip from Mt. Wilson to Mt. San Antonio in California. The precise measurements yielded a speed of 299 796 km/s. This was close to the modern value of 299 792 458 m/s.
RefractionAll light propagates at a finite speed, a speed called c, in
vacuum, and slower in other transparent media. The reduction of the speed of light in a denser material can be indicated by the
refractive index, n,
When a beam of light enters a medium from vacuum or another medium, it keeps the same frequency and changes its wavelength. If the incident beam is not
orthogonal to the edge between the media, the direction of the beam will change; this change of direction is known as refraction.
Refraction of light by
lenses is used to focus light in
magnifying glasses,
spectacles and
contact lenses,
microscopes and
refracting telescopes.
Theories about light
Indian theories
In ancient India, the philosophical schools of Samkhya and Vaisheshika, from around the 6th–5th century BC, developed theories on light. According to the Samkhya school, light is one of the five fundamental "subtle" elements (tanmatra) out of which emerge the gross elements. The atomicity of these elements is not specifically mentioned and it appears that they were actually taken to be continuous.
On the other hand, the Vaisheshika school gives an atomic theory of the physical world on the non-atomic ground of ether, space and time. (See Indian atomism.) The basic atoms are those of earth (prthivı), water (apas), fire (tejas), and air (vayu), that should not be confused with the ordinary meaning of these terms. These atoms are taken to form binary molecules that combine further to form larger molecules. Motion is defined in terms of the movement of the physical atoms and it appears that it is taken to be non-instantaneous. Light rays are taken to be a stream of high velocity of tejas (fire) atoms. The particles of light can exhibit different characteristics depending on the speed and the arrangements of the tejas atoms. Around the first century BC, the Vishnu Purana correctly refers to sunlight as the "the seven rays of the sun".
Later in 499, Aryabhata, who proposed a heliocentric solar system of gravitation in his Aryabhatiya, wrote that the planets and the Moon do not have their own light but reflect the light of the Sun.
The Indian Buddhists, such as Dignāga in the 5th century and Dharmakirti in the 7th century, developed a type of atomism that is a philosophy about reality being composed of atomic entities that are momentary flashes of light or energy. They viewed light as being an atomic entity equivalent to energy, similar to the modern concept of photons, though they also viewed all matter as being composed of these light/energy particles.
Greek and Hellenistic theories
In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth and water. He believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of the four elements and that she lit the fire in the eye which shone out from the eye making sight possible. If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun.
In about 300 BC, Euclid wrote Optica, in which he studied the properties of light. Euclid postulated that light travelled in straight lines and he described the laws of reflection and studied them mathematically. He questioned that sight is the result of a beam from the eye, for he asks how one sees the stars immediately, if one closes ones eyes, then opens them at night. Of course if the beam from the eye travels infinitely fast this is not a problem.
In 55 BC, Lucretius, a Roman who carried on the ideas of earlier Greek atomists, wrote:
"The light and heat of the sun; these are composed of minute atoms which, when they are shoved off, lose no time in shooting right across the interspace of air in the direction imparted by the shove." - On the nature of the Universe
Despite being similar to later particle theories, Lucretius's views were not generally accepted and light was still theorized as emanating from the eye.
Ptolemy (c. 2nd century) wrote about the refraction of light, and developed a theory of vision that objects are seen by rays of light emanating from the eyes.
Optical theoryThe Muslim scientist Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965-1040), known as Alhacen in the West, in his Book of Optics, developed a broad theory that explained vision, using geometry and anatomy, which stated that each point on an illuminated area or object radiates light rays in every direction, but that only one ray from each point, which strikes the eye perpendicularly, can be seen. The other rays strike at different angles and are not seen. He described the pinhole camera and invented the camera obscura, which produces an inverted image, and used it as an example to support his argument. This contradicted Ptolemy's theory of vision that objects are seen by rays of light emanating from the eyes. Alhacen held light rays to be streams of minute particles that travelled at a finite speed. He improved Ptolemy's theory of the refraction of light, and went on to discover the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colors. His major work Kitab al-Manazir was translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, as well his book dealing with the colors of sunset. He dealt at length with the theory of various physical phenomena like shadows, eclipses, the rainbow. He also attempted to explain binocular vision, and gave a correct explanation of the apparent increase in size of the sun and the moon when near the horizon. Through these extensive researches on optics, Al-Haytham is considered the father of modern optics.
Al-Haytham also correctly argued that we see objects because the sun's rays of light, which he believed to be streams of tiny particles travelling in straight lines, are reflected from objects into our eyes. He understood that light must travel at a large but finite velocity, and that refraction is caused by the velocity being different in different substances. He also studied spherical and parabolic mirrors, and understood how refraction by a lens will allow images to be focused and magnification to take place. He understood mathematically why a spherical mirror produces aberration. The 'plenum'René Descartes (1596-1650) held that light was a disturbance of the plenum, the continuous substance of which the universe was composed. In 1637 he published a theory of the refraction of light that assumed, incorrectly, that light travelled faster in a denser medium than in a less dense medium. Descartes arrived at this conclusion by analogy with the behaviour of sound waves. Although Descartes was incorrect about the relative speeds, he was correct in assuming that light behaved like a wave and in concluding that refraction could be explained by the speed of light in different media. As a result, Descartes' theory is often regarded as the forerunner of the wave theory of light. Particle theory
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), an atomist, proposed a particle theory of light which was published posthumously in the 1660s. Isaac Newton studied Gassendi's work at an early age, and preferred his view to Descartes' theory of the plenum. He stated in his Hypothesis of Light of 1675 that light was composed of corpuscles (particles of matter) which were emitted in all directions from a source. One of Newton's arguments against the wave nature of light was that waves were known to bend around obstacles, while light travelled only in straight lines. He did, however, explain the phenomenon of the diffraction of light (which had been observed by Francesco Grimaldi) by allowing that a light particle could create a localised wave in the aether.
Newton's theory could be used to predict the reflection of light, but could only explain refraction by incorrectly assuming that light accelerated upon entering a denser medium because the gravitational pull was greater. Newton published the final version of his theory in his Opticks of 1704. His reputation helped the particle theory of light to hold sway during the 18th century. Wave theoryIn the 1660s, Robert Hooke published a wave theory of light. Christian Huygens worked out his own wave theory of light in 1678, and published it in his Treatise on light in 1690. He proposed that light was emitted in all directions as a series of waves in a medium called the Luminiferous ether. As waves are not affected by gravity, it was assumed that they slowed down upon entering a denser medium.The wave theory predicted that light waves could interfere with each other like sound waves (as noted in the 18th century by Thomas Young), and that light could be polarized. Young showed by means of a diffraction experiment that light behaved as waves. He also proposed that different colors were caused by different wavelengths of light, and explained color vision in terms of three-colored receptors in the eye.
Another supporter of the wave theory was Leonhard Euler. He argued in Nova theoria lucis et colorum (1746) that diffraction could more easily be explained by a wave theory.
Later, Augustin-Jean Fresnel independently worked out his own wave theory of light, and presented it to the Académie des Sciences in 1817. Simeon Denis Poisson added to Fresnel's mathematical work to produce a convincing argument in favour of the wave theory, helping to overturn Newton's corpuscular theory.
The weakness of the wave theory was that light waves, like sound waves, would need a medium for transmission. A hypothetical substance called the luminiferous aether was proposed, but its existenc e was cast into strong doubt in the late nineteenth century by the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Newton's corpuscular theory implied that light would travel faster in a denser medium, while the wave theory of Huygens and others implied the opposite. At that time, the speed of light could not be measured accurately enough to decide which theory was correct. The first to make a sufficiently accurate measurement was Léon Foucault, in 1850. His result supported the wave theory, and the classical particle theory was finally abandoned. Electromagnetic theory
In 1845, Michael Faraday discovered that the angle of polarization of a beam of light as it passed through a polarizing material could be altered by a magnetic field, an effect now known as Faraday rotation. This was the first evidence that light was related to electromagnetism. Faraday proposed in 1847 that light was a high-frequency electromagnetic vibration, which could propagate even in the absence of a medium such as the ether.
Faraday's work inspired James Clerk Maxwell to study electromagnetic radiation and light. Maxwell discovered that self-propagating electromagnetic waves would travel through space at a constant speed, which happened to be equal to the previously measured speed of light. From this, Maxwell concluded that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation: he first stated this result in 1862 in On Physical Lines of Force. In 1873, he published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, which contained a full mathematical description of the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields, still known as Maxwell's equations. Soon after, Heinrich Hertz confirmed Maxwell's theory experimentally by generating and detecting radio waves in the laboratory, and demonstrating that these waves behaved exactly like visible light, exhibiting properties such as reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference. Maxwell's theory and Hertz's experiments led directly to the development of modern radio, radar, television, electromagnetic imaging, and wireless communications
