Francisco Santos
ACS 5
Janna Corn
18 September 2014
Light
Since the first days of the humankind on Earth that was something present and helped them develop their skills to survive. Light, even with a lot of studies about it, continues to be an ambiguous topic to explain. Therefore, most people know that it has uses and a lot of concepts about its functioning or essentially its definition.
Many scientists around the world developed concepts to explain what light is. This happened because each of them had a different concept to clarify this aspect. In the article “What Is Light?” written by Joel Achenbach, he argues that scientists usually use the expression light to designate the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where the visible light …show more content…
All of the doubts came from the fact that light is an abstract thing. In the article “What Is Light” written by Joel Achenbach, he describes the first theories, which attempted to support the way that light is composed. According to Isaac Newton it is composed of “unimaginable small and swift” particles and because of this characteristic it was able to move over space in the speed of light (98). James Clerk Maxwel made that second affirmation cited in the last sentence, and he concluded that it behaves like a electromagnetic wave (98). This shows that light is composed by slight particles. Until now, the scientists were reluctant to say if light moves like a particle or like a wave. In the article “ What Is Light?” written by Joel Achenbach, he shows that scientists encountered a way to join both theories and formulated one that says, “ Light moves through space as a wave, but when it encounters matter it behaves like a particle” (99). After this agreement, they made the behavior of light more clear; however, it continues a hard task to explain for someone who does not know anything about …show more content…
The ordinary kind of light that all have familiarity with is sunlight. In the article “Plugging into the Sun” written by George Johnson, he informs that sunlight has the capacity to produce a total of 120,000 terawatts, and humanity only needs a total of 16 terawatts (88). This shows the astronomic amount of energy produced by the sun that could be captured by the panels on the solar plants and transformed into electricity. Another way to use the light is turning it into a laser. In the article “Light Engineering” written by Joel Achenbach, he claims that when light is compressed and its energy is amplified, this generates a laser. It is applied either in medicine or in communications. In medicine it is normally used to perform surgeries due to the fact that it can cut with high efficiency, and in communications it is used to transmit the words of the phone calls by fiber-optic-cables (104). Those are some ways to use light, but their uses have a bright future so nobody knows where it will
ACS 5
Janna Corn
18 September 2014
Light
Since the first days of the humankind on Earth that was something present and helped them develop their skills to survive. Light, even with a lot of studies about it, continues to be an ambiguous topic to explain. Therefore, most people know that it has uses and a lot of concepts about its functioning or essentially its definition.
Many scientists around the world developed concepts to explain what light is. This happened because each of them had a different concept to clarify this aspect. In the article “What Is Light?” written by Joel Achenbach, he argues that scientists usually use the expression light to designate the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where the visible light …show more content…
All of the doubts came from the fact that light is an abstract thing. In the article “What Is Light” written by Joel Achenbach, he describes the first theories, which attempted to support the way that light is composed. According to Isaac Newton it is composed of “unimaginable small and swift” particles and because of this characteristic it was able to move over space in the speed of light (98). James Clerk Maxwel made that second affirmation cited in the last sentence, and he concluded that it behaves like a electromagnetic wave (98). This shows that light is composed by slight particles. Until now, the scientists were reluctant to say if light moves like a particle or like a wave. In the article “ What Is Light?” written by Joel Achenbach, he shows that scientists encountered a way to join both theories and formulated one that says, “ Light moves through space as a wave, but when it encounters matter it behaves like a particle” (99). After this agreement, they made the behavior of light more clear; however, it continues a hard task to explain for someone who does not know anything about …show more content…
The ordinary kind of light that all have familiarity with is sunlight. In the article “Plugging into the Sun” written by George Johnson, he informs that sunlight has the capacity to produce a total of 120,000 terawatts, and humanity only needs a total of 16 terawatts (88). This shows the astronomic amount of energy produced by the sun that could be captured by the panels on the solar plants and transformed into electricity. Another way to use the light is turning it into a laser. In the article “Light Engineering” written by Joel Achenbach, he claims that when light is compressed and its energy is amplified, this generates a laser. It is applied either in medicine or in communications. In medicine it is normally used to perform surgeries due to the fact that it can cut with high efficiency, and in communications it is used to transmit the words of the phone calls by fiber-optic-cables (104). Those are some ways to use light, but their uses have a bright future so nobody knows where it will