To show how light acts like a wave, you can pass light through a glass of water and watch the rainbow reflections on the wall. Why does this happen? We’ve already covered this in a previous lesson, but basically when the light passes through the glass and the water, it bends to give different frequencies of light and therefore different colors.
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Imagine dipping your fingers in a bathtub of water. Can you see the ripples traveling along the top surface? Light travels just like the waves on the surface of the water.

What what about light acting like a particle? Use a camera flash to quickly charge a glow-in-the-dark toy in a dark closet. The light particles (photons) hit the electrons in the toy and transfer energy to the electron. The result is that the electron emits another light particle of a different wavelength, which is why glow-in-the-dark toys don’t reflect back the same color light they were charged with.

Yay! You completed this section! Now it’s time for you to solve physics problems on your own:

Download your Light Waves Problem Set here.

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