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 not identical types of “light.” It’s like asking why liquid water and liquid hydrochloric acid can’t hydrate you if they’re both liquids.

“Light,” broadly speaking as a phenomenon, is radiating electromagnetic energy. Visible light, what your camera takes in and uses to make pictures is comprised of a particular range of radiating energy in the broad electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves are a different range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The components of your phones camera are designed and built to be sensitive to and capture the visible light spectrum. They physically cannot capture and depict any other part of the spectrum (although they can be affected by them – for example an electromagnetic pulse might render the electronic components of your camera useless). They just haven’t been tuned/designed to capture and depict other types of electromagnetic radiation. The same is true about your phone’s antenna that picks up and transmits radio waves. The constituent components of the antenna simply can’t pick up or transmit other ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum although they may be affected by it.