Light

17.1 What is Light?

• Light is an important source of energy.
• It enables us to see.
• The Sun is the most important source of
natural light.
• Without sunlight, it is impossible for living
things to survive on earth.
 Speed of light
• Light travels at a very high speed.
• During a storm, lightning and thunder
occur at the same location, but we see
lightning first before we hear thunder.
• This shows that light travels faster than
sound.
• Light has the fastest speed in the
Universe. It travels at 300,000,000 m/s in
a vacuum.
 Speed of light
• Comparison of the speed of light with the
speeds of other things:

Cheetah
Garden 31.0 m/s
snail
Sound in air
Light inin
vacuum Jetplane
Earth
330 m/s orbit 0.04m/s
350 m/s
Space shuttle
300,000,000 m/s
around the Sun
7,780 m/s
29,780 m/s
 How does light travel?
• Light travels in straight lines.
Experiment 1: How do we know light travels in straight
lines?

Now,
Look try looking
at the flame of a
through a bent hose.
candle through a
The lighthose.
straight from the
You
candle
shouldcannot
be ablereach
to see
your eyes.
the light This shows
through the
that light does not
hose.
bend, but travels in
straight lines.
 How does light travel?
• Since light travels in straight lines,
shadows have the same shape as the
object blocking the light.
• If light did not travel in straight lines, it
would go round all objects and cast no
shadow.
 Rays and beams
• We can trace the path of light from a source by
drawing straight lines to join one point to another.
• Such lines are called light rays.
• A bundle of light rays is known as a beam of light.
• Beams of light can be parallel, divergent or
convergent.

Parallel beam Divergent beam Convergent beam

(fan outwards) (merge to a point)
 17.2 Reflection
• When light rays hit the surface of
another medium, it can be
reflected.
• On a smooth surface such as the
surface of a mirror, regular
reflection takes place.
• A clear and undistorted image can
be seen in the surface.

A parallel beam
Reflected
of light
images
staysare very
parallel after
clear
regular
on a reflection.
smooth surface.
 17.2 Reflection
• If the surface is rough such as the surface of a sheet of
paper, irregular reflection occurs.
• The surface can be seen but no reflected images are
seen in it.
• For example, when light shines on the paper, no
reflected image is formed although light is reflected.

Although this page appears

smooth, under a microscope,
you can see how rough it is.
Thus, there is no reflected
image.
A parallel beam of light hitting a rough
surface gets scattered or reflected in an
irregular manner.
 Reflection in a mirror
• The flat mirror is a good reflector of light and is also
called a plane mirror.
• Look at yourself in a mirror. What you see is an
image of yourself.
• You can see your image in the mirror because light
rays from your body are regularly reflected by the
mirror into your eyes.
 Reflection in a mirror
• Characteristics of plane mirror images
o The distance of the image from the mirror is equal
to the distance of the object from the mirror.
o The image and the object are the same size.
o The image is upright.
o The image is laterally inverted. This means the left
and right side of the image are reversed.
o The image is virtual. This means that the image
cannot be projected onto a screen behind the mirror.
 Reflection in a mirror
• The position of an object’s image can be shown using
light rays.
• The light rays that bounce off the mirror into the eye of
the observer will appear to have originated from the
image from behind the mirror.
 Tracing reflected light rays
The perpendicular line to
the surface NO is also
known as the normal.
N
A B

A ray of light AO strikes the

mirror at point O, creating an
angle i with the
perpendicular line NO. AO is
called the incident ray, and
angle i is called the angle of Incident Reflected
incidence. ray ray
O
The light ray bounces off the mirror and leaves along the
path OB. OB is called the reflected ray. This ray makes
an angle r with the normal. This angle is known as the
angle of reflection.
 Types of mirrors
• Plane mirrors
o Plane mirrors are usually used to check one’s
appearance.
o They are also used as a form of decoration to make
a room appear more spacious.
o Plane mirrors are used in cars as rear-view or
side-view mirrors.
 Types of mirrors
• Concave mirrors
o These are mirrors with a curved surface that bends
inwards.
o When the object is near the concave surface, images
formed are virtual and magnified.
 Types of mirrors

• Convex mirrors
o Mirrors that bend outwards are called
convex mirrors.
o The back of a spoon is an example.
Side-view mirrors of cars are sometimes
convex mirrors.
o Convex mirrors cover a wider field of vision,
and the images formed are distorted and
smaller.
 17.3 Refraction
• Light bends when a light ray travels
from one medium to another medium
of different density (such as from air
to water).
• This bending of light is known
as refraction.
 17.3 Refraction
• When light travels from air to glass, it gets refracted.

At A, the point where the ray enters,

incident ray
a normal is drawn. When light enters
Normal the glass block, it is moving from
a less dense medium to a denser
medium. Hence, the ray of light
A will bend towards the normal.

glass block
Normal

When the ray of light exits the glass

B block at B, it is moving from a denser
medium to a less dense medium.
Hence, it will bend away from
emergent ray the normal.
Effect of refraction: Apparent depth
• Refraction of light causes the coin
to appear higher than it really is.
• When viewed from the surface, the depth
of the basin of water will always seem less
than what it really is.
• We say the apparent depth is less than
the real depth.
• This explains why a pool appears
shallower than it is.
 17.4 Dispersion of White Light
• Sunlight appears white, but it is made up of
different colours.
2. This is because the different
colours of white light bend
1. When a beam of white towards the normal through
light passes through a diffferent angles when entering
prism, it is split into and leaving the prism.
different colours.

3. A spectrum of colours is produced,

which is made up of seven colours:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo
and violet. This splitting of white light is
called dispersion.
 17.5 Colours
• Primary colours are basic colours that
cannot be obtained by mixing other
colours of light.
• Primary colours of light are red, green and
blue.
• Secondary colours of light are colours
that are formed by mixing primary colours.
• Secondary colours are cyan, yellow and
magenta.
17.5 Colours

Green

Cyan
Yellow
White
Blue Red

Magenta
 17.5 Colours
• We can see the colour of an object as it reflects that
colour into our eyes.
• When white light falls on a green object, the object
absorbs all other colours and reflects only green light.
• This is the case for the leaves of the strawberries below.
• The strawberries appear red because they absorb all
other colours except red.
White Green White Red
 17.5 Colours
Experiment 3: Coloured light
Take three different coloured balls: red, blue and green.
Let us see what happens to these coloured balls under
different colours of light.
When redwhite
light
light
is is
shone
shone onon
thethese
balls,
balls,the
only each
redball
ballwill
willreflect
reflecttheir
the red
respective
light. The green
colours.andThis
blueisballs
because
white light
appear black
contains
since they
all the
can
colours
only of
the spectrum.
reflect green and blue light
respectively.
 17.5 Colours
Experiment 3: Coloured light
What happens when a yellow ball is used in this
experiment?

But if red
Under white
lightlight,
is shone
a yellow
on the
ball
appears
yellow ball,
yellow
it appears red.
Yellow is a secondary colour, which
consists of red and green. Thus,
a yellow ball can reflect both red
and green light.
 Miscellaneous
• http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
• http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/wav
es_particles/lightspeed_evidence.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(phy
sics)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction
• http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/Dispersi
onOfLightThroughAPrism/
• http://www.fi.edu/color/