Where does light go when the light source goes off?

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I know this is probably a stupid one here.. But like, isn’t light just photons bouncing around? My lightbulb is firing these photons out when it’s switched on but presumably it’s not sucking them back in when it’s off?

So where da light go?

Also shouldn’t it get brighter the longer the light source is on as there’s more photons?

Where are they all going?

In: Physics

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Photons don’t bounce around as much as they are absorbed and re-emitted. But there’s some loss each time this happens, as heat. So the last photons that are emitted before the light shuts off are (slowly, from their perspective, but almost immediately from ours) absorbed, some re-emitted, absorbed, some re-emitted, and so on until they’re all gone.

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