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Showing posts from April, 2008

My Yahoo! Answers Science Post

I am my dad's personal Yahoo! answers person when it comes to things science and physics. So when I received a question on the dual nature of light and matter, I wrote him back a nice long (LFP!) email in answer. I thought I'd share. Question: Sound travels in waves and needs an "ether" for transmission. Light is also a wave but doesn't need an ether. Is light in space "wave" or "particle"? because when light bends do particles bend or this this one of the examples of light as wave? Answer: Sound is a pressure wave. It is the compressing of molecules. It is the compression that is the sound. Light is a wave of electromagnetic fields, fields in this case being force representations. The light wave is a constant of nature in which a electric force changing will produce a magnetic force which will cause an electric force in a stable, repeating way traveling forward. There are other places where electricity creates magnetic forces and v