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Light
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation within the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that can be perceived by the human eye.[1] Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nm, between the infrared (with longer wavelengths) and the ultraviolet (with shorter wavelengths).[2][3] This wavelength means a frequency range of roughly 430–750 terahertz (THz).


Beam of sun light inside the cavity of Rocca ill'Abissu at Fondachelli-Fantina, Sicily
The main source of light on Earth is the Sun. Sunlight provides the energy that green plants use to create sugars mostly in the form of starches, which release energy into the living things that digest them. This process of photosynthesis provides virtually all the energy used by living things. Historically, another important source of light for humans has been fire, from ancient campfires to modern kerosene lamps. With the development of electric lights and power systems, electric lighting has effectively replaced firelight. Some species of animals generate their own light, a process called bioluminescence. For example, fireflies use light to locate mates and vampire squid use it to hide themselves from prey.

The primary properties of visible light are intensity, propagation-direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum and polarization, while its speed in a vacuum, 299 792 458 m/s, is one of the fundamental constants of nature. Visible light, as with all types of electromagnetic radiation (EMR), is experimentally found always to move at this speed in a vacuum.[4]

In physics, the term 'light' sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not.[5][6] In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. Like all types of electromagnetic radiation, visible light propagates as waves. However, the energy imparted by the waves is absorbed at single locations the way particles are absorbed. The absorbed energy of the electromagnetic waves is called a photon and represents the quanta of light. When a wave of light is transformed and absorbed as a photon, the energy of the wave instantly collapses to a single location and this location is where the photon "arrives". This is what is called the wave function collapse. This dual wave-like and particle-like nature of light is known as the wave–particle duality. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.

Electromagnetic spectrum and visible light

The electromagnetic spectrum, with the visible portion highlighted
Main article: Electromagnetic spectrum
Generally, EM radiation (the designation "radiation" excludes static electric, magnetic and near fields), or EMR, is classified by wavelength into radio waves, microwaves, infrared, the visible spectrum that we perceive as light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.

The behavior of EMR depends on its wavelength. Higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths and lower frequencies have longer wavelengths. When EMR interacts with single atoms and molecules, its behavior depends on the amount of energy per quantum it carries.

EMR in the visible light region consists of quanta (called photons) that are at the lower end of the energies that are capable of causing electronic excitation within molecules, which leads to changes in the bonding or chemistry of the molecule. At the lower end of the visible light spectrum, EMR becomes invisible to humans (infrared) because its photons no longer have enough individual energy to cause a lasting molecular change (a change in conformation) in the visual molecule retinal in the human retina, which change triggers the sensation of vision.

There exist animals that are sensitive to various types of infrared, but not by means of quantum-absorption. Infrared sensing in snakes depends on a kind of natural thermal imaging, in which tiny packets of cellular water are raised in temperature by the infrared radiation. EMR in this range causes molecular vibration and heating effects, which is how these animals detect it.

Above the range of visible light, ultraviolet light becomes invisible to humans, mostly because it is absorbed by the cornea below 360 nm and the internal lens below 400 nm. Furthermore, the rods and cones located in the retina of the human eye cannot detect the very short (below 360 nm) ultraviolet wavelengths and are in fact damaged by ultraviolet. Many animals with eyes that do not require lenses (such as insects and shrimp) are able to detect ultraviolet, by quantum photon-absorption mechanisms, in much the same chemical way that humans detect visible light.

Various sources define visible light as narrowly as 420–680 nm[7][8] to as broadly as 380–800 nm.[9][10] Under ideal laboratory conditions, people can see infrared up to at least 1,050 nm;[11] children and young adults may perceive ultraviolet wavelengths down to about 310–313 nm.[12][13][14]

Plant growth is also affected by the colour spectrum of light, a process known as photomorphogenesis.

Linear visible spectrum.svg
Speed of light
Main article: Speed of light
The speed of light in a vacuum is defined to be exactly 299 792 458 m/s (approx. 186,282 miles per second). The fixed value of the speed of light in SI units results from the fact that the metre is now defined in terms of the speed of light. All forms of electromagnetic radiation move at exactly this same speed in vacuum.

Different physicists have attempted to measure the speed of light throughout history. Galileo attempted to measure the speed of light in the seventeenth century. An early experiment to measure the speed of light was conducted by Ole Rømer, a Danish physicist, in 1676. Using a telescope, Rømer observed the motions of Jupiter and one of its moons, Io. Noting discrepancies in the apparent period of Io's orbit, he calculated that light takes about 22 minutes to traverse the diameter of Earth's orbit.[15] However, its size was not known at that time. If Rømer had known the diameter of the Earth's orbit, he would have calculated a speed of 227 000 000 m/s.

Another more accurate measurement of the speed of light was performed in Europe by Hippolyte Fizeau in 1849.[16] Fizeau directed a beam of light at a mirror several kilometers away. A rotating cog wheel was placed in the path of the light beam as it traveled from the source, to the mirror and then returned to its origin. Fizeau found that at a certain rate of rotation, the beam would pass through one gap in the wheel on the way out and the next gap on the way back. Knowing the distance to the mirror, the number of teeth on the wheel and the rate of rotation, Fizeau was able to calculate the speed of light as 313 000 000 m/s.

Léon Foucault carried out an experiment which used rotating mirrors to obtain a value of 298 000 000 m/s[16] in 1862. Albert A. Michelson conducted experiments on the speed of light from 1877 until his death in 1931. He refined Foucault's methods in 1926 using improved rotating mirrors to measure the time it took light to make a round trip from Mount Wilson to Mount San Antonio in California. The precise measurements yielded a speed of 299 796 000 m/s.[17]

The effective velocity of light in various transparent substances containing ordinary matter, is less than in vacuum. For example, the speed of light in water is about 3/4 of that in vacuum.

Two independent teams of physicists were said to bring light to a "complete standstill" by passing it through a Bose–Einstein condensate of the element rubidium, one team at Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the other at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also in Cambridge.[18] However, the popular description of light being "stopped" in these experiments refers only to light being stored in the excited states of atoms, then re-emitted at an arbitrary later time, as stimulated