Kids Research Express

. Light, form of energy visible to the human eye that is radiated by moving charged particles. Light from the Sun provides the energy needed for plant growth. Plants convert the energy in sunlight into storable chemical form through a process called photosynthesis . Petroleum , coal, and natural gas are the remains of plants that lived millions of years ago, and the energy these fuels release when they burn is the chemical energy converted from sunlight. When animals digest the plants and animals they eat, they also release energy stored by photosynthesis. Scientists have learned through experimentation that light behaves like a particle at times and like a wave at other times. The particle-like features are called photons. Photons are different from particles of matter in that they have no mass and always move at the constant speed of about 300,000 km/sec (186,000 mi/sec) when they are in a vacuum. When light diffracts, or bends slightly as it passes around a corner, it shows waveli...

. Light behavior can be divided into two categories: how light interacts with matter and how light travels, or propagates through space or through transparent materials. The propagation of light has much in common with the propagation of other kinds of waves, including sound waves and water waves. Topics: Interaction with Material How Light Travels

. A. Interaction with Material When light strikes a material, it interacts with the atoms in the material, and the corresponding effects depend on the frequency of the light and the atomic structure of the material. In transparent materials, the electrons in the material oscillate, or vibrate, while the light is present. This oscillation momentarily takes energy away from the light and then puts it back again. The result is to slow down the light wave without leaving energy behind. Denser materials generally slow the light more than less dense materials, but the effect also depends on the frequency or wavelength of the light. Under certain laboratory conditions, scientists can slow light down. In 2001 scientists brought a beam of light to a halt by temporarily trapping it within an extremely cold cloud of sodium atoms. Materials that are not completely transparent either absorb light or reflect it. In absorbing materials, such as dark colored cloth, the energy of the oscillating electr...

. How Light Travels The first successful theory of light wave motion in three dimensions was proposed by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens in 1678. Huygens suggested that light wave peaks form surfaces like the layers of an onion. In a vacuum, or a uniform material, the surfaces are spherical. These wave surfaces advance, or spread out, through space at the speed of light. Huygens also suggested that each point on a wave surface can act like a new source of smaller spherical waves, which may be called wavelets, that are in step with the wave at that point. The envelope of all the wavelets is a wave surface. An envelope is a curve or surface that touches a whole family of other curves or surfaces like the wavelets. This construction explains how light seems to spread away from a pinhole rather than going in one straight line through the hole. The same effect blurs the edges of shadows. Huygens’s principle, with minor modifications, accurately describes all forms of wave motion. Interfe...