THE NATURE OF

LIGHT
START
 4 MAJOR THEORIES
HAVE BEEN PROPOSED ABOUT THE NATURE
OF LIGHT

1 WAVE THEORY
2 CORPUSCULAR THEORY

3 ELECTROMAGNETIC
THEORY
4 QUANTUM THEORY
WAVE THEORY
-In 1690, Dutch scientist Christiaan
Huygens proposed the wave theory of
light.
-According to Huygens, light is
propagated in the form of waves, through a
continuous medium. Huygens assumed the
existence of an invisible, elastic medium
called ether, which pervades all space. The
disturbance from the source is propagated
in the form of waves through space and the
energy is distributed equally in all
CORPUSCULAR THEORY
-In 1704, Isaac Newton proposed the corpuscular theory of
light. The corpuscular theory is the simplest theory of light
in which light is assumed as tiny particles called
corpuscles. The corpuscular theory is often referred to as
particle theory or Newton’s theory of light.
-The corpuscles can be of different sizes. The different
colors of light are due to the different sizes of the
corpuscles.
-According to Newton’s law of motion, in the absence of
other forces, light travels in a straight line.
ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY

-This theory was discovered in the nineteenth century by

James Maxwell, He proposed that light waves do not require
any medium for transmission. Light waves possess both
electrical and magnetic properties and can travel through a
vacuum. At any instant of time electric and magnetic fields
are perpendicular to each other and also perpendicular to the
direction of light. The electromagnetic wave is a transverse
wave. At every point in the wave at a given point of time,
the electric and magnetic field strengths are equal. The
velocity of the waves depends on the electric and magnetic
properties of the medium.
 QUANTUM THEORY

-The quantum theory of light was proposed by Max

Planck in 1900.
According to this theory, light is emitted in discrete
packets of energy called quanta.
Albert Einstein referred to each quantum of energy
as a photon. Each photon carries a quantity of
energy equal to the product of the frequency of
vibration of that photon and Planck's constant.
 Speed of Light

 The term “speed of light”, represented by a lowercase letter c, refers

to speed of light in vacuum.

 Up to seventeenth century, there were conflicting ideas about the

speed of light.

 Aristotle, hero of Alexandria, Johannes Kepler, and Rene Descattes

believed that light travels in vacuum at an infinite speed. Other
scientist believed that light travels in vacuum at a finite speed, which
they tried to determine through experiments.
 Galileo is often credited with being the first scientist to determine the speed of
light by measuring the time it took for light to travel the distance between two
hilltops that were a mile apart.

 In 1676, Danish astronomer Ole Roemer made the first astronomical

determination of the speed of light based on the eclipses of Io, one of Jupiter’s
moons.
 English physicist James Bradley determined the speed of light in 1728 using apparent changes in
the position of stars due to the motion of earth around the sun. He came up which a value of 301
000 km/s.

 French physicist Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau conducted the first successful terrestrial

determination of the speed of light in 1849.

the time (∆t) for the light to pass from

one notch to the next was determined by
dividing the angle between the two
notches by the speed of rotation of the
wheel.

the speed of light (c) was calculated

using this formula:
∁=2d/(∆t)
 In 1862, French physicist Leon Foucault used another method. Using an
eight-sided mirror instead of a rotating wheel, he came up with a value of
299,796 km/s.

Working on the method of Foucault, American physicist Albert Michelson

began experimenting on the speed of light in 1878 and continued it on and
off for the rest of his life. He obtained a value of 2.99798× m/s. With the use
of precision devices like cesium clocks, the speed of light was accurately
determined to be 299792458 m/s. however, this value is rounded to 3x m/s.
Thank You!!
LAST

REFERENCES
https://youtu.be/iy02Cmc4StU
 https://www.physics-and-radio-electronics.com/blog/corpuscular-theory-light/
 https://www.vedantu.com/physics/quantum-theory-of-light
 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu%2
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AAQFg
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_4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAY


https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbyjus.com%2Fchemistry%2Fqua
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80000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA4QjRxqFwoTCOjAjdG03_4CFQAAAAAdAA
AAABAY
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