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Questions for Thought and Discussion

• What are the two main models used by scientists to describe light? How were these reconciled first in the 19th and the then in the 20th centuries?



• How many lasers do you own? How many LEDs?



• What is the oldest thing you can see? Why?



• Why is the sky at night not uniformly bright?



• Is there any limit to how short or how long the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation can be?



• Why does colour fascinate people?



• Why is infrared radiation useful?



• Why are X-rays useful?



• What is your favourite wavelength? Why?



• What is the most significant application of light?



• What are the most important contributions light has made to the modern world?



• Name 5 things enabled by light that we couldn’t live without.



• How many communications channels you could encode on a beam of light if each channel requires 1010 Hz?



• If you can send 1010 bits per second over one optical communications channel, and use the entire capacity of the light beam to send information, how long would it take to send the recipe to replicate a human body (at least 10X bits)?



• How hot could an object on the Earth get if you focussed all the light from the Sun on it?



• When you look at your reflection in a spoon, why does it appear the “right” way up when your eye is close to the surface of the spoon and upside down when you are further away?

Further Reading

Further reading can be found at the back of Light: A Very Short Introduction