waves have energy.
a wave in water is not the water moving (the water moves mostly up and down, not in the direction of the wave - until it breaks).
the terms for mass and energy are interchangable as they are directly proportional (E = mc^2).
light is not exactly like a water wave though, as it doesn't seem to require a medium to propogate.
Hi Dude108
It is my understanding that light is made up of particles, known as photons.
Depending on how you look at it a Wave in it self would not exist or have mass without a particle. Also, a wave is generally made up of particles moving in a direction having accumulated some momentum. Pritty basic, I know.What do you think?
This is a very difficult issue to understand fully, as the accepted truth is totally contrary to our intuition. In the 19th century, the answer was simple - light is a wave, and there was a highly successful theory of its behaviour. But problems started to appear. The first was that theory suggested that hot objects should emit infinite amounts of radiation - something needed fixing there. Then Einstein showed that light acted as if it came in discrete units (photons), each with an amount of energy proportional to the frequency. This discovery was an adequate explanation for the thermal emission problem (high frequency light would not often be emitted because the photons had so much energy). But it was not possible to throw away Maxwell's theory, because light behaved as a wave in many, many circumstances.
In the 1920s, the solution was found, the weirdest and most important component of modern physics, quantum mechanics. Roughly speaking, it says that the probability distribution of light (more precisely, a sort of square root of this) moves like a wave, just like Maxwell said, but that when you observe light you always observe particles of it.
So the answer given above that light is both particle and wave is the most correct.
Jbell...I hear ya...it SHOULD be basic.
So, to clarify all of the above, light, at it's most basic form, is a particle.
But, sometimes that particle acts as a particle alone, and at other times, the particles act in conjunction as a wave?
No. A single photon acts as a wave. For example, the classic experiment with photons being sent one by one through a double slit apparatus cannot be explained without this.
There are certainly things you can say about a photon that don't involve its wave-like nature, but if you want to describe how it moves, you cannot treat it as simply a particle.
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - A. Einstein
(laughing) Ok. Back to where I was at the beginning.
And the Einstein quote is very much appreciated. One to save!
Dam-ned double slit experiment!
Things have gotten more complicated in general, in my opinion. Nowadays we have recently observed "entanglement sudden death" and then the "re-birth effect".
SO, IF ONE PARTICLE CAN BE A WAVE THEN A WHOLE BUNCH OF PARTICLES CAN BE A SUNAMI, lol
I was just kidding, but really doesn't a wave have to be a length of something moveing at a frequencey of occurance over time? (suggesting that it would take at least two particles to make up a wave?)
I believe therein lies the confusion Jbell. "No" is the answer, and I don't think we've answered why yet.
If a classical electromagnetic wave moves through a material with charged particles in it (electrons and nuclei), then the particles oscillate as it moves, leading to a ripple of dipoles through the material. When an electromagnetic wave passes through a vacuum, the same thing happens (in recent years it has become known that the vacuum is full of virtual charged particles, and you can view it that these oscillate). So that explains what the wave is, and in a sense, it is made up of particles oscillating (although virtual ones). But when you get to quantum mechanics, the wave is best interpreted as merely saying where the photon may be, as even if the wave is widely spread, if it interacts it suddenly becomes localised to a very specific place.
ok?
Hoping someone can help me out here.
Light can arise as either particle or wave.
Would like clarification on the difference between the two. Have read up on this over and over, but need a simple differentiation.
My mind has taken particles as being "things"...a thing one can point to, just as with a rock or Xbox360 and say,"It's right there. It has shape and mass."
But, do waves have mass? Is a wave a physical "thing," or, is a light wave similar to a wave of water...it moves, you can point to it and say "there's a wave," but it's really just a mass of h20? Does it have dimension?
Any and all clarification would be greatly appreciated.