Light & Sight

John15

Light travels as waves
Waves interfere with each other
We see reflected light.
We can see the source of light and the things illuminated but not the light inbetween Why?
Light is reflected in all directions from all things why does it not interfere between the object we are looking at and our eyes, light is also reflected from the eyes which should also interfere with light coming in.
Example throw a single pebble in a pond you get easily recognisable wave , same with 2 or 3 but throw a handful in and you just get a mess of waves.

JaredJames

To see light, it has to reflect off something.

sophiecentaur

Space is a 'linear medium' which means that the fields of one wa e fo not affect the fields of a wave it's crossing. So they don't modify each other.

russ_watters

That isn't correct:

To see light, it has to hit your retina.

russ_watters

You answered your own question. When you throw a handful of pebbles into a pond you get a whole mess of waves instead of all the waves cancelling each other out because waves have to be perfectly timed and aligned to cancel each other out and neither a handful of pebbles, nor reflected light is coherent enough for that.

John15

Many thanks for the replies but still a bit confused.
why does light have to reflect off something in order to become visible?
In order to see something as a sharp image the light has to come in a straight line without any interference, so are we saying that this light is able to travel through what must be a mess of waves inbetween without interference, am not talking about waves cancelling out but being jumbled up for want of a better phrase.

JaredJames

My mistake. I was thinking of it along the lines of you either have to look at the source of the light to see it, or it has to reflect off of something.

In both cases, you need the light to enter the eye. It can't "pass near by".

davenn

and expanding on that ....

@ OP yes it travels as waves and thats fine to think of it as waves for some applications
but it also travels as particles ... photons... and it those photons entering your eye that get detected.
The more photons, the brighter the light.

Dave

Dremmer

[quote]Light travels as waves
Waves interfere with each other
We see reflected light.
We can see the source of light and the things illuminated but not the light inbetween Why?[\quote]


The same reason as to why we don't see sound waves. Light waves and sound waves can't be detected by our eyes.

cepheid

[QUOTE=Dremmer;3757507]Say what???

Light waves can be detected by our eyes, provided they are within a specific range of wavelengths. That is how we see things.

John15

So am I right in thinking that light travels as waves from source but acts as particle when reflected? which is what we see.

Still not sure why it does not interfere though.
Think of a wave tank, standing at one end waves from other end are easy to make out, now add waves coming from top, bottom and sides plus from your end and all you get is turbulence and making it very difficult to make out individual waves.

I do have another question about waves travelling from source but lets try to conclude this first.

sophiecentaur

It also behaves as waves when reflected and as particles when it travels -if that's the way you want to explain it. Waves are certainly good enough for Optics and Radio studies You should stop trying to categorise this sort of thing. You'll find it's like trying to get hold of a bar of soap in the bath.

Interactions between EM and matter can often be thought of, conveniently, is terms of Photons but, otoh, a lens is 'matter' and treating the action of a lens by considering photons would just be madness.

jim hardy

"""We can see the source of light and the things illuminated but not the light inbetween """

how about a hologram ?

sophiecentaur

How ABOUT a Hologram?
Do you know how they work, Jim?

Drakkith

Light can be explained as a wave in almost all aspects. Diffraction, reflection, and interference are all perfectly described by treating light as an electromagnetic wave. However, when light finally gets to something and is absorbed is can only be treated as a particle that gives all of its energy up and no longer exists. This is how the molecule in your eye's cone and rod cells works, it absorbs energy from the photon and changes shape, setting off a chain of events that ends with you "seeing" something. The key is that the light has to enter and interact with your eye. The reason we cannot see the light in between is that two waves don't "bounce" off of each other. One light wave passing by another does not reflect or refract off of it. (Other than normal interference effects which is not the same) Think of your water waves. If you make two waves they don't bounce off of each other and go in completely different directions or create new waves at the point they interact.

Light can only interfere when the wavelength and such are almost exactly alike, meaning it is "Coherent". Normally light entering your eye does not meet this requirement. This is similar to why sound waves do not normally interfere and keep you from hearing the speakers in your TV.

It may make it difficult, but it by no means makes it impossible to determine which wave is which. Your ears do this all day long.

I recommend picking up a book on optics. I have several, including Optics for Dummies which is pretty nice. But any book about basic optics will be able to explain it all.

Naty1

Try reading this online article and note the illustrations:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_i...l_interference

You'll find a lot the relates to your questions like:


"different points in the source" could be the gas molecules in a fluoresescent light, the filament in an incandescent light, or our local star, the sun....

This relates to various 'points' having different energies, so the amplitude and frequency [color] also has variations...it's not easy to get monochromatic (single frequency) light....hence we see versions of 'white light' meaning light appears sort of white visually but is actually a combination of colors:

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

Dadface

The nature of light is such that it enables us to see things but we don't actually see light itself.