Does light propagate as a wave of little bullets?

[bdrobin519]

It takes an expert experimentalist to detect the increased reach of unobserved radiation.

If you can even slightly believe it's possible; there just might exist a variable unaccounted for. Now how to measure it is the next question.

 

[Ibix]

If you can even slightly believe it's possible; there just might exist a variable unaccounted for. Now how to measure it is the next question.

How to measure radiation without measuring it? That is, indeed, a question.

 

[sophiecentaur]

There is a high chance of you being right, but in High School teachers tell us to make exercices showing lines of little bullets reflecting on mirrors, is this wrong?

A late comment about this but we need to be careful in the use of the word "wrong". Ray Optics assumes that those narrow beams have zero width and do not converge or diverge on themselves. If high school teachers covered themselves by qualifying everything they try to tell kids then they'd never get to the end of any Physics course. Just see how wide this thread has become, just because PF is trying to tie ups all the loose ends of this 'straightforward' tropic.
Ray Optics works; end of.

 

[Ibix]

Ray Optics works

...within limits, of which you sometimes need to be aware. But yes - Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong should be required reading the first time any student encounters a science instructor introducing a better model.

 

[sophiecentaur]

...within limits, of which you sometimes need to be aware. But yes - Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong should be required reading the first time any student encounters a science instructor introducing a better model.

OK then. Ray Optics works for Ray Optics problems.??