What is light?

In the late 1600’s Newton explained many of the

properties of light by assuming it was made of
particles.

”Its true, that from my theory I argue the corporeity of

light; but I do it without any absolute positiveness…”

I’m
“The waves on the surface of stagnating
thinking
water, passing by the sides of a broad
waves.
obstacle which stops part of them, bend
afterwards and dilate themselves
gradually into the quiet water behind
Because of Newton’s the obstacle. But light is never known
to follow crooked passages, nor to bend
enormous prestige, into the shadow.”
his support of the
particle theory of
light tended to In 1678 Christian Huygens argued
suppress other that light was a pulse traveling
points of view. through a medium, or as we would
say, a wave.
In 1803 Thomas Young’s double slit experiment showed that, much like water waves, light
diffracts and produces an interference pattern.
Light must be
waves!

=2dsin
 “…it seems we have strong reason to conclude
that light itself is an electromagnetic disturbance
in the form of waves propagated through the
electromagnetic field according to
electromagnetic laws.”

In the 1860’s Maxwell, building on Faraday’s work,

developed a mathematical model of electromagnetism.
He was able to show that these electromagnetic waves
travel at the speed of light.
De Broglie's hypothesis of matter waves
postulates that any particle of matter that has
linear momentum is also a wave. The
wavelength of a matter wave associated with a
particle is inversely proportional to the
magnitude of the particle's linear momentum.

The de Broglie wavelength is the

wavelength, λ, associated with an object and
is related to its momentum and mass.
De Broglie first used Einstein's famous equation
relating matter and energy:

E = mc2
where E = energy, m = mass, c = speed of light

Using Planck's theory which states every quantum of a

wave has a discrete amount of energy given by
Planck's equation:
E = hf where E = energy, h = Plank's
constant (6.62607 x 10-34 J s), f = freq
Since de Broglie believed particles and wave have the
same traits, he hypothesized these two energies are
equal
mc2 = hf

Because real particles do not travel at the speed of

light, De Broglie submitted velocity (v) for the speed
of light (c).
mv2 = hf =hv/

 = hv/ mv2 = h/mv

The greater is the particle’s momentum, the shorter is its
wavelength [ = h/mv]