So I know that photons travel in waves, but is that like a straight up and down wave? Or is it more like a cork screw?
Why not just straight? I’m guessing the rudimentary answer has something to do with energy?
How do we know this?
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> So I know that photons travel in waves, but is that like a straight up and down wave? Or is it more like a cork screw?
Both can happen. The technical term is _polarization_, where we call the up-down (or left-right, diagonal, etc) one _linear_, and the corkscrew one _circular_. The basic ones are vertical, horizontal and circular, and if you “combine” any two in the right way, you can end up with the third. For example, if you have something waving left-right, and now add up-down movement to it, you either get diagonal movement, or a circular pattern, or more generally an elliptical one (like a quenched circle).
One can even filter for the photons of a certain kind in a rather naive way: make some minute opening only such photons should pass through. If you have lots of very fine vertical slits, you filter for that polarization. Same with horizontal. If you want to filter for circular, you can use tiny corkscrews.
Note that corkscrews come in two kinds, or _chiralities_, clockwise and counter-clockwise turning. Those are different polarizations as well, and you have to consistently use the same type for the filter.
As a side effect of combining the waving motions, those corkscrews also slightly turn vertically polarized light a bit in their direction. Some basic molecules such as sugar are famous for this, you can measure the sugar content of water by how much it “turns” light.
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