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

Because they differ so much in energy content, things that are good at receiving one small slice are much, much, much, much better at doing so than things which try to read the whole spectrum all at once.

A radio photon has a wavelength between centimeters and *hundreds of kilometers.* For FM/AM radio, it’s around 2-3 meters wavelength. By comparison, visible light has a wavelength of *hundreds of nanometers.* This means visible light carries approximately six million times more energy than radio waves do.

A detector good enough to give great images won’t have the fineness to distinguish radio waves. A radio wave detector precise enough to distinguish radio waves carefully would be completely blown out if you tried to use it to pick up visible light.