My son wants to know how we can perceive light and it not take up any space at the same time.
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How much space does the surface of the ocean take up? Not the body of the ocean, just its surface.
Light exists in a field that permeates space meaning that it is everywhere. The field is much like the surface of an ocean where It can have high and low points but being just like a surface, it doesn’t take up any space. You can also think of it as being in a different dimension if your kid is into sci-fi.
Richard Feynman had an excellent explanation related to this, along with the “tremendous mess” that’s constantly happening all around us.
Light doesn’t occupy space, but you can perceive the energy from light because you have cells that specially formed just to understand the energy that is being directed at you. You can notice the effect with light (obvious), but also with heat, and in a completely different way, with sound. Sound doesn’t occupy space, it creates distortions in the matter around you.
What do you mean ‘occupy space’?
Say we have a perfectly mirrored room. If we fill it with water, we can only put so much water in the room. The room is ‘full’. There is a finite number of atoms that will fit. Instead, if we fill the room with light (photons) how much can we put in? There is no limit.
(… well until the electromagnetic field strength is so high we get electron-positron pair production. What happens then I have no idea, but probably the walls of the room have exploded.)
Yes if waves in a puddle are taking up space on the surface, otherwise no. It depends on how you define “taking up space”. Note that just like waves is a puddle light (electromagnetic waves ) can overlap.
Question: do shadows offer a clue?
Occupy space is layman’s term for the true definition of ‘mass’.
Light is layman’s term for photon, which have no mass. So they do not occupy space. If several photons happen to be in the same timespace, they will combine and amplify.
Electrons have mass. They occupy space. You can’t have electrons in the same timespace. They repulse themselves.
Light is a massless particle made up of pure energy. You can see it bc it emits a visible wavelength. That’s the simplest explanation. It’s a very loose explanation mind you.
Light is a wave of the electromagnetic field. So, I guess it has a spot in the same way that a chuck of water has a spot on the ocean, but that doesn’t really stop a boat from being there too. Also don’t look too closely at the analogy because water waves are not like light waves(and sometimes light has particle properties but like just don’t worry about that).
I am only 14 so I don’t know really well, but when I asked my chemistry teacher, he told me that atoms are basically ultra condensed energy (hence einsteins equation e=mc2 which allows you to convert mass and energy). So there are plenty of forms of energy, which can all be converted between each other. So I would guess that also means that atoms don’t really have mass either, but since they are a condensed energy ball, it behaves like it has mass, but technically it doesn’t. So energy doesn’t take up any space at all, it is just able to interact.
Also, sorry if I am completely wrong. I am just trying my best and this is extremely complicated quantum mechanics/physics
FYI: I have no idea whether this is correct at all, I am just using common sense, and my chemistry teacher told me that the explaination he gave is an extremely^∞ dumbed down answer and that even he isn’t entirely sure as this is extremely (you can’t really quantitatively describe) how complicated this stuff is.
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