if light and radio waves are all the same phenomenon, why cant my phone use one component as both the camera and the antenna?

Question

As above

In: Physics

Answer 1

They’re the “same thing” in the same way that a bowling ball and a tank shell are the “same thing”. To carry the analogy forward, “why can’t the bowling alley detect how many pins a 120mm HEAT shell knocks over?”

To go a bit beyond the ELI5, your phone’s camera only detects things with a high enough energy (tank shells) while its antenna looks for a very specific amount of energy so that it can avoid miscommunications where it receives the wrong signal.

The difference in energy between radio waves and visible light is so extraordinarily vast that the principles behind each device are totally different.