Been studying science in college for about 2 years and this simple question has me questioning my own IQ. I understand how light travels through different mediums but photons are particles right? Actually physical particles that can travel through solid blocks of glass?
I dont know if Im just stupid or my teacher doesnt care, this question could keep me up at night.
In: Physics
Biggest wrong assumption you’re making is saying photons are particles. They’re not. Sure, sometimes we choose to *treat* them as particles because it works as a way to understand how they behave, but they aren’t. An actual particle would have mass. Photons don’t.
They’re “compartmentalized” waves. If you could make a wave on water that never spreads out, but remains as a sort of coherent single crested wave, that’s closer to what a photon is. You could treat that as a particle too, one that bounces off obstacles and such. But this hypothetical wave is not actually a physical *thing* that exists. It’s just the water surface being warped because of kinetic energy, like any wave in water is. A photon similarly isn’t a physical thing that exists, it’s just a fluctuation of electromagnetic energy.
This doesn’t answer how it travels through glass, because I have no clear cut answer for that, but it hopefully helps along with the other answers to understand better what photons actually are.
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