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I'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 bounc
by RichardCA 6y ago
I'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.