Physic

“LIGHT”

Aldi Okta Priyatna

1007121475
Teknik kimia S1 (A)
Properties of Light
What is light?
Drop a rock on the smooth surface of a pond and you’ll see
ripples spread outward from the spot where the rock struck. The
rock produced a wave much like the one in Figure 1. A wave is
a disturbance that carries energy through matter or space. The
matter in this case is the water, and the energy originally comes
from the impact of the rock.As the ripples spread out, they carry
some of that energy.
Light is another type of wave that carries energy. A source of
light such as the Sun or a lightbulb gives off light waves into
space, just as the rock hitting the pond causes waves to form in
the water. But while the water waves spread out only on the surface
of the pond, light waves spread out in all directions from
the light source. Figure 1 shows how light waves travel.
Sometimes, however, it is easier to think of light in a different
way. A light ray is a narrow beam of light that travels in a
straight line. You can think of a source of light as giving off, or
emitting, a countless number of light rays that are traveling
away from the source in all directions.
Light Travels Through Space There is, however, one
important difference between light waves and the water wave
ripples on a pond. If the pond dried up and had no water, ripples
could not form.Waves on a pond need a material—water—
in which to travel. The material through which a wave travels is
called a medium. Light is an electromagnetic wave and doesn’t
need a medium in which to travel. Electromagnetic waves can
travel in a vacuum, as well as through materials such as air,
water, and glass.

Light and Matter

What can you see when you are in a closed room with no
windows and the lights out? You can see nothing until you turn
on a light or open a door to let in light from outside the room.
Most objects around you do not give off light on their own.
They can be seen only if light waves from another source bounce
off them and into your eyes, as shown in Figure 2. The process
of light striking an object and bouncing off is called reflection.
Right now, you can see these words because light emitted by a
source of light is reflecting from the page and into your eyes.
Not all the light rays reflected from the page strike your eyes.
Light rays striking the page are reflected in many directions, and
only some of these rays enter your eyes.
 An opaque object allows no A translucent object allows A transparent object allows almost all
light to pass through it. some light to pass through it. light to pass through it.

Opaque, Translucent, and Transparent When light

waves strike an object, some of the waves are absorbed by the
object, some are reflected by it, and some might pass through it.
What happens to light when it strikes the object depends on the
material that the object is made of.
All objects reflect and absorb some light waves. Materials
that let no light pass through them are opaque (oh PAYK). You
cannot see other objects through opaque materials. On the
other hand, you clearly can see other objects through materials
such as glass and clear plastic that allow nearly all the light
that strikes them to pass through. These materials are transparent.
A third type of material allows only some light to pass
through. Although objects behind these materials are visible,
they are not clear. These materials, such as waxed paper and
frosted glass, are translucent (trans LEW sent). Examples of
opaque, translucent, and transparent objects are shown in
Figure 3.

Color
The light from the Sun might look white, but it
is a mixture of colors. Each different color of light
is a light wave with a different wavelength. Red
light waves have the longest wavelengths and violet
light waves have the shortest wavelengths. As
shown in Figure 4, white light is separated into
different colors when it passes through a prism.
The colors in white light range from red to violet.
When light waves from all these colors enter the
eye at the same time, the brain interprets the mixture figure 4
as being white.
Why do objects have color? Why does grass look green or
a rose look red? When a mixture of light waves strikes an object
that is not transparent, the object absorbs some of the light
waves. Some of the light waves that are not absorbed are
reflected. If an object reflects red waves and absorbs all the other
waves, it looks red. Similarly, if an object looks blue, it reflects
only blue light waves and absorbs all the others. An object that figure 5

reflects all the light waves that strike it looks white, while one
that reflects none of the light waves that strike it looks black.
Figure 5 shows gym shoes and socks as seen under white light
and as seen when viewed through a red filter that allows only red
light to pass through it.

Primary Light Colors How many colors exist? People often

say white light is made up of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and
violet light. This isn’t completely true, though.Many more colors
than this exist. In reality, most humans can distinguish thousands
of colors, including some such as brown, pink, and purple,
that are not found among the colors of the rainbow.
Light of almost any color can be made by mixing
different amounts of red, green, and blue light. Red,
green, and blue are known as the primary colors.
Look at Figure 6. White light is produced where
beams of red, green, and blue light overlap. Yellow
light is produced where red and green light overlap.
You see the color yellow because of the way your
brain interprets the combination of the red and
green light striking your eye. This combination of
light waves looks the same as yellow light produced
by a prism, even though these light waves have only figure 6
a single wavelength.
Speed of light
The speed of light in a vacuum is defined to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s
(approximately 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.
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, Ole observed the motions of Jupiter and one of its moons, Io. Noting discrepancies
in the apparent period of Io's orbit, Rømer calculated that light takes about 22 minutes to
traverse the diameter of Earth's orbit.[4] Unfortunately, its size was not known at that time. If
Ole 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. 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 used an experiment which used rotating mirrors to obtain a value of
298,000,000 m/s 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 Mt. Wilson to Mt. San Antonio in California.
The precise measurements yielded a speed of 299,796,000 m/s.
Two independent teams of physicists were able to bring light to a complete standstill by
passing it through a Bose-Einstein Condensate of the element rubidium, one team led by Dr.
Lene Vestergaard Hau of Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science in
Cambridge, Mass., and the other by Dr. Ronald L. Walsworth and Dr. Mikhail D. Lukin of
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also in Cambridge.

\
Electromagnetic spectrum

Electromagnetic spectrum with light highlighted

Generally, EM radiation (the designation 'radiation' excludes static electric and magnetic and
near fields) is classified by wavelength into radio, microwave, infrared, the visible region we
perceive as light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.

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

An example of refraction of light. The straw appears bent, because of refraction of light as it
enters liquid from air.

Refraction is the bending of light rays when passing through a surface between one
transparent material and another. It is described by Snell's Law:

where θ1 is the angle between the ray and the surface normal in the first medium, θ2 is the
angle between the ray and the surface normal in the second medium, and n1 and n2 are the
indices of refraction, n = 1 in a vacuum and n > 1 in a transparent substance.

When a beam of light crosses the boundary between a vacuum and another medium, or
between two different media, the wavelength of the light changes, but the frequency remains
constant. If the beam of light is not orthogonal (or rather normal) to the boundary, the change
in wavelength results in a change in the direction of the beam. This change of direction is
known as refraction.

The refractive quality of lenses is frequently used to manipulate light in order to change the
apparent size of images. Magnifying glasses, spectacles, contact lenses, microscopes and
refracting telescopes are all examples of this manipulation.

Optics
The study of light and the interaction of light and matter is termed optics. The observation
and study of optical phenomena such as rainbows and the aurora borealis offer many clues as
to the nature of light as well as much enjoyment.
Light sources

A cloud illuminated by sunlight

There are many sources of light. The most common light sources are thermal: a body
at a given temperature emits a characteristic spectrum of black-body radiation. Examples
include sunlight (the radiation emitted by the chromosphere of the Sun at around
6,000 Kelvin peaks in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum when plotted in
wavelength units [6] and roughly 40% of sunlight is visible), incandescent light bulbs (which
emit only around 10% of their energy as visible light and the remainder as infrared), and
glowing solid particles in flames. The peak of the blackbody spectrum is in the infrared for
relatively cool objects like human beings. As the temperature increases, the peak shifts to
shorter wavelengths, producing first a red glow, then a white one, and finally a blue color as
the peak moves out of the visible part of the spectrum and into the ultraviolet. These colors
can be seen when metal is heated to "red hot" or "white hot". Blue thermal emission is not
often seen. The commonly seen blue colour in a gas flame or a welder's torch is in fact due to
molecular emission, notably by CH radicals (emitting a wavelength band around 425 nm).

Atoms emit and absorb light at characteristic energies. This produces "emission lines"
in the spectrum of each atom. Emission can be spontaneous, as in light-emitting diodes, gas
discharge lamps (such as neon lamps and neon signs, mercury-vapor lamps, etc.), and flames
(light from the hot gas itself—so, for example, sodium in a gas flame emits characteristic
yellow light). Emission can also be stimulated, as in a laser or a microwave maser.

Deceleration of a free charged particle, such as an electron, can produce visible

radiation: cyclotron radiation, synchrotron radiation, and bremsstrahlung radiation are all
examples of this. Particles moving through a medium faster than the speed of light in that
medium can produce visible Cherenkov radiation.

Certain chemicals produce visible radiation by chemoluminescence. In living things,

this process is called bioluminescence. For example, fireflies produce light by this means, and
boats moving through water can disturb plankton which produce a glowing wake.

Certain substances produce light when they are illuminated by more energetic
radiation, a process known as fluorescence. Some substances emit light slowly after
excitation by more energetic radiation. This is known as phosphorescence.
 Phosphorescent materials can also be excited by bombarding them with subatomic
particles. Cathodoluminescence is one example. This mechanism is used in cathode ray tube
television sets and computer monitors.

A city illuminated by light bulbs

Certain other mechanisms can produce light:

 scintillation
 electroluminescence
 sonoluminescence
 triboluminescence
 Cherenkov radiation

When the concept of light is intended to include very-high-energy photons (gamma rays),
additional generation mechanisms include:

 Radioactive decay
 Particle–antiparticle annihilation
Units and measures
Light is measured with two main alternative sets of units: radiometry consists of
measurements of light power at all wavelengths, while photometry measures light with
wavelength weighted with respect to a standardized model of human brightness perception.
Photometry is useful, for example, to quantify Illumination (lighting) intended for human use.
The SI units for both systems are summarized in the following tables.

SI radiometry units
Quantity Symbol SI unit Abbr. Notes
Radiant
Q joule J energy
energy
radiant energy per unit time, also
Radiant flux Φ watt W
called radiant power
Radiant
I watt per steradian W·sr−1 power per unit solid angle
intensity
power per unit solid angle per unit
projected source area.
watt per steradian
Radiance L W·sr−1·m−2
per square metre
called intensity in some other fields of
study.
power incident on a surface.
watt per square
Irradiance E, I W·m−2
metre sometimes confusingly called
"intensity".
Radiant
exitance / watt per square
M W·m−2 power emitted from a surface.
Radiant metre
emittance
watt per square emitted plus reflected power leaving a
Radiosity J or Jλ W·m−2
metre surface
watt per steradian
per metre3
W·sr−1·m−3 commonly measured in
Lλ or
Spectral or W·sr−1·m−2·nm−1
or
radiance
Lν watt per steradian
W·sr−1·m−2·Hz−1
per square
metre per hertz
commonly measured in W·m−2·nm−1
watt per metre3 −3
Eλ W·m or 10-22W·m-2·Hz-1, known as a Solar
Spectral or
or or Flux Unit (SFU)[SI Radiometry units 1]
irradiance watt per square
Eν W·m−2·Hz−1
metre per hertz

1. ^ NOAA / Space Weather Prediction Center includes a definition of the solar

flux unit
 SI photometry unitsv · d · e
Quantity Symbol SI unit Abbr. Notes

Luminous energy Qv lumen second lm·s units are sometimes called talbots

Luminous flux F lumen (= cd·sr) lm also called luminous power

Luminous intensity Iv candela (= lm/sr) cd an SI base unit

candela per square

Luminance Lv cd/m2 units are sometimes called "nits"
metre

Used for light incident on a

Illuminance Ev lux (= lm/m2) lx
surface

Luminous Used for light emitted from a

Mv lux (= lm/m2) lx
emittance surface

ratio of luminous flux to radiant

Luminous efficacy   lumen per watt lm/W
flux

The photometry units are different from most systems of physical units in that they
take into account how the human eye responds to light. The cone cells in the human eye are
of three types which respond differently across the visible spectrum, and the cumulative
response peaks at a wavelength of around 555 nm. Therefore, two sources of light which
produce the same intensity (W/m2) of visible light do not necessarily appear equally bright.
The photometry units are designed to take this into account, and therefore are a better
representation of how "bright" a light appears to be than raw intensity. They relate to raw
power by a quantity called luminous efficacy, and are used for purposes like determining how
to best achieve sufficient illumination for various tasks in indoor and outdoor settings. The
illumination measured by a photocell sensor does not necessarily correspond to what is
perceived by the human eye, and without filters which may be costly, photocells and charge-
coupled devices (CCD) tend to respond to some infrared, ultraviolet or both.

Light pressure
 Light exerts physical pressure on objects in its path, a phenomenon which can be
deduced by Maxwell's equations, but can be more easily explained by the particle nature of
light: photons strike and transfer their momentum. Light pressure is equal to the power of the
light beam divided by c, the speed of light.  Due to the magnitude of c, the effect of light
pressure is negligible for everyday objects.  For example, a one-milliwatt laser pointer exerts
a force of about 3.3 piconewtons on the object being illuminated; thus, one could lift a U. S.
penny with laser pointers, but doing so would require about 30 billion 1-mW laser pointers. 
However, in nanometer-scale applications such as NEMS, the effect of light pressure is more
pronounced, and exploiting light pressure to drive NEMS mechanisms and to flip nanometer-
scale physical switches in integrated circuits is an active area of research.
At larger scales, 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.
Historical theories about light, in chronological order

Physical theories

René Descartes (1596–1650) held that light was a mechanical property of the
luminous body, rejecting the "forms" of Ibn al-Haytham and Witelo as well as the "species"
of Bacon, Grosseteste, and Kepler.[16] 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.

Descartes is not the first to use the mechanical analogies but because he clearly asserts
that light is only a mechanical property of the luminous body and the transmitting medium,
Descartes' theory of light is regarded as the start of modern physical optics.[17]

Particle theory

Pierre Gassendi.

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.

Thomas Young's sketch of the two-slit experiment showing the diffraction of light.
Young's experiments supported the theory that light consists of waves.

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, if it were
a transverse wave. 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. By the year 1821, Fresnel was able to show
via mathematical methods that polarization could be explained only by the wave theory of
light and only if light was entirely transverse, with no longitudinal vibration whatsoever.

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.
 Newton's corpuscular theory implied that light would travel faster in a denser
medium, while the wave theory 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.[18] His
result supported the wave theory, and the classical particle theory was finally abandoned.

Electromagnetic theory

Main article: Electromagnetism

A linearly polarized light wave frozen in time and showing the two oscillating
components of light; an electric field and a magnetic field perpendicular to each other and to
the direction of motion (a transverse wave).

In 1845, Michael Faraday discovered that the plane of polarization of linearly

polarized light is rotated when the light rays travel along the magnetic field direction in the
presence of a transparent dielectric, an effect now known as Faraday rotation.[19] This was the
first evidence that light was related to electromagnetism. In 1846 he speculated that light
might be some form of disturbance propagating along magnetic field lines.[20] 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

Albert Einstein had proposed the Theory of relativity.

The wave theory was 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 proposing that space and time appeared to be changeable entities, which
accounted for the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein also proposed a previously
unknown fundamental equivalence between energy and mass with his famous equation

where E is energy, m is, depending on the context, the rest mass or the relativistic
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 appeared to contradict
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 with 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. 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

where h is Planck's constant, λ 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:

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 Davisson 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 1930s, 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.
 Daftar Pustaka

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/light

http://www.howstuffworks.com/light/htm

http://library.thinkquest.org/28160/light