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That something trivial like seeing speckle patterns in my eyes when I'm tired is proof of the quantum nature of light.
by RichardCA 6y ago
That something trivial like seeing speckle patterns in my eyes when I'm tired is proof of the quantum nature of light.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoInteresting. How does that work?
- RichardCA 6y agoI'm sure I'll do a poor job articulating it. It's similar to bokeh that photographers are familiar with. You look at a light source and the light seems to bounce through the pupil and back out again. If there's a drop of liquid on your eyelashes you'll see a bokeh ring with interference ripples around the edge. I just remember as a child I thought it was strange, then in high school physics I saw how laser light was always grainy, and even things like the solidity of matter can be thought of as optical illusion (caused by the wavelengths of visible light casting a well-defined shadow). Then later I got into photography and realized what you can do with even a little knowledge about light and optics. I still have a sense of wonder about it even though I'm an average shooter at best. Hope that all made sense.
- RichardCA 6y agoThis is what I'm taking about, when I was a kid before I got fitted with glasses, I remember the world looking like this... https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99407/what-is-the-cause-of-inclusions-in-my-bokeh https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99407/what-is-the-...
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoOK, but that's proof of the wave nature of light, not quite of the quantum nature.
- RichardCA 6y agoLet's try to work the problem in a way that avoids pedantry, just for a moment. This is one of my favorite PBS clips from the 80's in which Richard Feynman explains how strange the nature of light and by extension all of electromagnetic radiation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHJ7FmV0M4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHJ7FmV0M4 If you listen carefully, you notice that he never talks about wave/particle duality (because he wasn't giving a classroom lecture). What he does talk about is an electric field that waves slosh around in, and that something "elaborate and complicated" is going on at a deeper level. That's what I'm on about, if you were pressed to explain it so that a bright child would get it, how would you do that?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoFor this problem/phenomenon, I'd probably just talk about waves and interference. I might mumble something about something elaborate and complicated going on at a deeper level, or I might ignore that and just talk about waves.