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n is caused by the velocity being different in different substances. He also studied spherical and parabolic mirrors, and understood how refraction by a lens will allow images to be focused and magnification to take place. He understood mathematically why a spherical mirror produces aberration.

Avicenna (980-1037) agreed that the speed of light is finite, as he "observed that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite." [kjljksf;gjsfsgsfgfgsfsf

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ayhān al-Bīrūnī]] (973-1048) also agreed that light has a finite speed, and he was the first to discover that the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236-1311) and his student Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1260-1320) continued the work of Ibn al-Haytham, and they were the first to give the correct explanations for the rainbow phenomenon.

The 'plenum'

René Descartes (1596-1650) held that light was a disturbance of the plenum, the continuous substance of which the universe was composed. In 1637 he published a theory of the refraction of light that assumed, incorrectly, that light travelled faster in a denser medium than in a less dense medium. Descartes arrived at this conclusion by analogy with the behaviour of sound waves. Although Descartes was incorrect about the relative speeds, he was correct in assuming that light behaved like a wave and in concluding that refraction could be explained by the speed of light in different media. As a result, Descartes' theory is often regarded as the forerunner of the wave theory of light.

Particle theory

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965-1040) proposed a particle theory of light in his Book of Optics (1021). He held light rays to be streams of minute energy particles that travel in straight lines at a finite speed. He states in his optics that "the smallest parts of light," as he calls them, "retain only properties that can be treated by geometry and verified by experiment; they lack all sensible qualities except energy." Avicenna (980-1037) also proposed that "the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by a luminous source".

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), an atomist, proposed a particle theory of light which was published posthumously in the 1660s. Isaac Newton studied Gassendi's work at an early age, and preferred his view to Descartes' theory of the plenum. He stated in his Hypothesis of Light of 1675 that light was composed of corpuscles (particles of matter) which were emitted in all directions from a source. One of Newton's arguments against the wave nature of light was that waves were known to bend around obstacles, while light travelled only in straight lines. He did, however, explain the phenomenon of the diffraction of light (which had been observed by Francesco Grimaldi) by allowing that a light particle could create a localised wave in the aether.

Newton's theory could be used to predict the reflection of light, but could only explain refraction by incorrectly assuming that light accelerated upon entering a denser medium because the gravitational pull was greater. Newton published the final version of his theory in his Opticks of 1704. His reputation helped the particle theory of light to hold sway during the 18th century. The particle theory of light led Laplace to argue that a body could be so massive that light could not escape from it. In other words it would become what is now called a black hole. Laplace withdrew his suggestion when the wave theory of light was firmly established. A translation of his essay appears in The large scale structure of space-time, by Stephen Hawking and George F. R. Ellis.

Wave theory

In the 1660s, Robert Hooke published a wave theory of light. Christiaan Huygens worked out his own wave theory of light in 1678, and published it in his Treatise on light in 1690. He proposed that light was emitted in all directions as a series of waves in a medium called the Luminiferous ether. As waves are not affected by gravity, it was assumed that they slowed down upon entering a denser medium.

The wave theory predicted that light waves could interfere with each other like sound waves (as noted around 1800 by Thomas Young), and that light could be polarized. Young showed by means of a diffraction experiment that light behaved as waves. He also proposed that different colors were caused by different wavelengths of light, and explained color vision in terms of three-colored receptors in the eye.

Another supporter of the wave theory was Leonhard Euler. He argued in Nova theoria lucis et colorum (1746) that diffraction could more easily be explained by a wave theory.

Later, Augustin-Jean Fresnel independently worked out his own wave theory of light, and presented it to the Académie des Sciences in 1817. Simeon Denis Poisson added to Fresnel's mathematical work to produce a convincing argument in favour of the wave theory, helping to overturn Newton's corpuscular theory.

The weakness of the wave theory was that light waves, like sound waves, would need a medium for transmission. A hypothetical substance called the luminiferous aether was proposed, but its existence was cast into strong doubt in the late nineteenth century by the Michelson-Morley experiment. 8jrtyj of Huygens and others implied the opposite. At that time, the speed of light could not be measured accurately enough to decide which theory was correct. The first to make a sufficiently accurate measurement was Léon Foucault, in 1850. His result supported the wave theory, and the classical particle theory was finally abandoned.

Electromagnetic theory

In 1845, Michael Faraday discovered that the angle of polarization of a beam of light as it passed through a polarizing material could be altered by a magnetic field, an effect now known as Faraday rotation. This was the first evidence that light was related to electromagnetism. Faraday proposed in 1847 that light was a high-frequency electromagnetic vibration, which could propagate even in the absence of a medium such as the ether.

Faraday's work inspired James Clerk Maxwell to study electromagnetic radiation and light. Maxwell discovered that self-propagating electromagnetic waves would travel through space at a constant speed, which happened to be equal to the previously measured speed of light. From this, Maxwell concluded that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation: he first stated this result in 1862 in On Physical Lines of Force. In 1873, he published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, which contained a full mathematical description of the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields, still known as Maxwell's equations. Soon after, Heinrich Hertz confirmed Maxwell's theory experimentally by generating and detecting radio waves in the laboratory, and demonstrating that these waves behaved exactly like visible light, exhibiting properties such as reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference. Maxwell's theory and Hertz's experiments led directly to the development of modern radio, radar, television, electromagnetic imaging, and wireless communications.

The special theory of relativity

The wave theory was wildly successful in explaining nearly all optical and electromagnetic phenomena, and was a great triumph of nineteenth century physics. By the late nineteenth century, however, a handful of experimental anomalies remained that could not be explained by or were in direct conflict with the wave theory. One of these anomalies involved a controversy over the speed of light. The constant speed of light predicted by Maxwell's equations and confirmed by the Michelson-Morley experiment contradicted the mechanical laws of motion that had been unchallenged since the time of Galileo, which stated that all speeds were relative to the speed of the observer. In 1905, Albert Einstein resolved this paradox by revising the Galilean model of space and time to account for the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein formulated his ideas in his special theory of relativity, which radically altered humankind's understanding of space and time. Einstein also demonstrated a previously unknown fundamental equivalence between energy and mass with his famous equation

${\displaystyle E=mc^{2}\,}$

where E is energy, m is rest mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.

Particle theory revisited

Another experimental anomaly was the photoelectric effect, by which light striking a metal surface ejected electrons from the surface, causing an electric current to flow across an applied voltage. Experimental measurements demonstrated that the energy of individual ejected electrons was proportional to the frequency, rather than the intensity, of the light. Furthermore, below a certain minimum frequency, which depended on the particular metal, no current would flow regardless of the intensity. These observations clearly contradicted the wave theory, and for years physicists tried in vain to find an explanation. In 1905, Einstein solved this puzzle as well, this time by resurrecting the particle theory of light to explain the observed effect. Because of the preponderance of evidence in favor of the wave theory, however, Einstein's ideas were met initially by great skepticism among established physicists. But eventually Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect would triumph, and it ultimately formed the basis for wave–particle duality and much of quantum mechanics.

Quantum theory

A third anomaly that arose in the late 19th century involved a contradiction between the wave theory of light and measurements of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by thermal radiators, or so-called black bodies. Physicists struggled with this problem, which later became known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, unsuccessfully for many years. In 1900, Max Planck developed a new theory of black-body radiation that explained the observed spectrum correctly. Planck's theory was based on the idea that black bodies emit light (and other electromagnetic radiation) only as discrete bundles or packets of energy. These packets were called quanta, and the particle of light was given the name photon, to correspond with other particles being described around this time, such as the electron and proton. A photon has an energy, E, proportional to its frequency, f, by

${\displaystyle E=hf={\frac {hc}{\lambda }}\,\!}$

where h is Planck's constant, ${\displaystyle \lambda }$ is the wavelength and c is the speed of light. Likewise, the momentum p of a photon is also proportional to its frequency and inversely proportional to its wavelength:

${\displaystyle p={E \over c}={hf \over c}={h \over \lambda }.}$

As it originally stood, this theory did not explain the simultaneous wave- and particle-like natures of light, though Planck would later work on theories that did. In 1918, Planck received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the founding of quantum theory.

Wave–particle duality

The modern theory that explains the nature of light includes the notion of wave–particle duality, described by Albert Einstein in the early 1900s, based on his study of the photoelectric effect and Planck's results. Einstein asserted that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency. More generally, the theory states that everything has both a particle nature and a wave nature, and various experiments can be done to bring out one or the other. The particle nature is more easily discerned if an object has a large mass, and it was not until a bold proposition by Louis de Broglie in 1924 that the scientific community realized that electrons also exhibited wave–particle duality. The wave nature of electrons was experimentally demonstrated by Davission and Germer in 1927. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work with the wave–particle duality on photons (especially explaining the photoelectric effect thereby), and de Broglie followed in 1929 for his extension to other particles.

Quantum electrodynamics

The quantum mechanical theory of light and electromagnetic radiation continued to evolve through the 1920s and 1930's, and culminated with the development during the 1940s of the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. This so-called quantum field theory is among the most comprehensive and experimentally successful theories ever formulated to explain a set of natural phenomena. QED was developed primarily by physicists Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Julian Schwinger, and Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga. Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions.

Light pressure

Light pushes on objects in its path, just as the wind would do. This pressure is most easily explainable in particle theory: photons hit and transfer their momentum. Light pressure can cause asteroids to spin faster, acting on their irregular shapes as on the vanes of a windmill. The possibility to make solar sails that would accelerate spaceships in space is also under investigation.

Although the motion of the Crookes radiometer was originally attributed to light pressure, this interpretation is incorrect; the characteristic Crookes rotation is the result of a partial vacuum. This should not be confused with the Nichols radiometer, in which the motion is directly caused by light pressure.

Spirituality

The sensory perception of light plays a central role in spirituality (vision, enlightenment, darshan, Tabor Light), and the presence of light as opposed to its absence (darkness) is a common Western metaphor of good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, and similar concepts.

References

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference MacTutor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. 1, p. 710.
3. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Al-Biruni", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Rashed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. Cite error: The named reference MacKay was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
6. Cite error: The named reference Hamarneh was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. Kathy A. (02.05.2004). "Asteroids Get Spun By the Sun". Discover Magazine. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. "Solar Sails Could Send Spacecraft 'Sailing' Through Space". NASA. 08.31.2004. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. "NASA team successfully deploys two solar sail systems". NASA. 08.9.2004. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. P. Lebedev, Untersuchungen über die Druckkräfte des Lichtes, Ann. Phys. 6, 433 (1901).
11. Nichols, E.F & Hull, G.F. (1903) The Pressure due to Radiation, The Astrophysical Journal,Vol.17 No.5, p.315-351

See also

light]]

• Electromagnetic spectrum
• Huygens' principle
• Fermat's principle
• International Commission on Illumination
• Light beam - in particular about light beams visible from the side
• Light pollution
• Lighting
• Photic sneeze reflex
• Photometry
• Rights of Light
• Spectrometry
• Visible light

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• Light