We know light bounces and reflects through objects, but how is light actually created?
In: Physics
Light is created at the atomic level. In really simple terms and from my limited knowledge of physics, an atom has electrons orbiting it’s nucleus. If we were to scale this up, we could think of our Sun as the nucleus of an atom. The planets in our solar system are the electrons orbiting this nucleus. Then imagine a giant orb surrounds all of the planets and the Sun with the Sun being at the center. This orb is the whole atom. So, these planets are orbiting the Sun inside this orb. They orbit at a specific distance from the Sun but if we were to energize the atom, it would force the planets into a higher orbit. Then as the planets fall back down to their normal orbit, they release that extra energy in the form of a photon. A photon is a form of energy that is visible and what we see as light. This is what’s happening inside our Sun and this is what happens inside a lightbulb. The filament inside the lightbulb is made of atoms and when we turn on the switch we’re energizing those atoms with electricity which causes the rise and fall in the electron’s orbits creating the release of photons and that’s how light is made.
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