Light

In this lecture:
- What is light?

- The double slit experiment

- The Aether

- The Michelson and Morley experiment

 The two theories of light

1- Newton’s corpuscular theory of light:

Newton thought that light, just like matter, was made of extremely small particles that travel in
a straight line (rectilinear motion).
Size of corpuscles determines the color of the light.

Activity : think of a counter argument to this model, if there exists.

 The two theories of light

1- Huygens’ wave model of light:

Huygens thought that light was wave propagations

Activity : think of a counter argument to this model, if there exists.

Which model do you think is right?
If light was a particle, why don’t we see beams of light
that cross interacting with each other? Particles should
collide.
Diffraction happens to waves
1- water waves diffraction :
1- sound waves diffraction :
Light diffracts too! How can diffraction happen if light
was a stream of corpuscles?
The double-slit expriment
This experiment, done by Thomas Young, convinced the scientific community by the
time that light was a wave.
It was based on the concept of interference. waves interfere with each other
1- water interference:
How interference works:
The double-slit expriment
The double-slit proved light was a wave.
What’s next? What does that imply?
If light is a wave, what is waving?
The luminiferous Aether
Visualizing the Aether

Narrowing down the eligible attributes for the Aether can help us test this hypothesized
medium empirically, and get a better understanding of what the Aether is like;

• the Aether must be a rigid medium, hard to compress

• The Aether must be filling all of space, permeating everything

• the Aether must have no resistance, allowing solid objects to pass through it easily

• There must be an Aether wind traveling in a specific direction

The Aether is, therefore, visualized as a ghostlike wind or flow passing athwart the
earth.

Now we’re ready to test the goddamn Aether!

There is no Aether!
Things got even more
confusing
Einstein won the Nobel prize for demonstrating, through the photoelectric effect,
that light behaves like particles.
It seems that light sometimes behaves like a wave, and sometimes behaves like a
particle.
So
WHAT THE HELL IS
LIGHT?
-If light is a particle, how can we explain the
double slit experiment?

-If light is a wave, how can we explain the

photoelectric effect?
Luckily, there is an answer!
Search for it.