Notes - Newton an Light
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Notes from an Astronomy Lecture.
Transcript of Notes - Newton an Light
2 of Newtons Experiments
1)Liiight /Prism\ = Spectrum.
Newton blocked all of the colors, letting only the red through, into a second prism.
What comes out is the same red light.
THEREFORE, its not the prisms fault.Which implies that white light is in fact composed of many colors.
2)Newton broke light in a prism, caught it in a lens, focusing it back onto ANOTHER prism,
What comes out is white light.
Which is further evidence that white light is composed of colors.
SO
What is light?1) A shower of particles2) Some sort of wave3) Something else?
Newton - ParticlesRobert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens, Leonard Euler - Wave
Lets talk about sound to define a wave.Sound is a wave,Composed of pure tones,Similarly, Light is composed of pure colorsSo maybe light is a wave
What else can we say about waves?
They have wavelength (lamda)They have a time scale (T, seconds per oscillation)They have frequency (1/T, f)They have speed (v=L/T or v=Lf) The speed at which energy moves
Light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, including radio waves, x-rays, and many others.Speed of light (C) = 3x10^8 m/s
Radio waves are measured in MHz, or mega hertz (10^6)
Light waves have the same speeds,If they did not, then something like Io would sometimes appear one color, and then the other colours would fill in.
