Re: RE: Properties of Light - EM waves/particles
Russell Garber ( (no email) )
Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:13:41 -0400
Hi Ken et all!
Thanks once again for the info. I now understand the reason why light does
not need a medium to propagate through. The answer was right in front of
me the whole time and is the photon itself. The photon is the carrier of
all electromagnet radiation, including light and thus does not need a
separate medium or carrier. My confusion was in treating light as waves
(like sound waves and not electromagnetic waves), or particles, or both,
instead of just something that has similar characteristics of both. I
think I may even finally get the "how", in how the speed of light could be
constant in all frames of reference (again, relative to the medium it
propagates through, yada, yada, yada). The confusing part here, was in why
the speed of the atom emitting the photon did not add to the overall speed
and thus a stationary observer and one that is moving would measure the
speed as the same. Then I started thinking about C being similar to a
terminal velocity. Thus, no matter how fast the atom was travelling
before emitting the photon, once the photon reached the "terminal
velocity", that's it, so even if the speeds did add together, it still
would not be faster than C. I think I can finally stop thinking about
this one.... <g>
Thanks again to everyone for helping me understand this better, and I hope
this thread will at least serve to help any other people out there who are
confused about this topic.
-Russ
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