If light is a particle, can it be eaten? Does light have calories?

295 views

Or alternatively, are we breathing in light particles into our lungs all the time?

In: 0

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Calories are just units of energy, so you could technically calculate the number of calories in a photon. Green light has a wavelength of 550 nm, and the equation for photon energy is hc/L, where h and c are constants and L is the wavelength. [It works out to be about 10^(-19) calories](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=hc%2F550+nm+to+calories) in a photon of green light.

Of course, you can’t *eat* light. Digestion extracts energy by breaking apart chemical bonds; our cells use sugar to get energy in the form of a molecule called ATP. Light has energy, but it isn’t usable by your cells. Similarly, we aren’t really “breathing in” light. Breathing moves air in and out of our lungs. Light isn’t a gas so it doesn’t move in and out of our lungs like that. Light is a completely different category of particle from anything tangible that you might interact with like food or air

You are viewing 1 out of 4 answers, click here to view all answers.