| MadSci Network: Physics |
Hi Steven, This wave-particle duality stuff is pretty strange - it's very unlike things we are familiar with in everyday life. I'm impressed that you're thinking about it and trying to understand how it works. There is a flaw in your reasoning, however: you say that if light is slowed, the waves will stay the same speed. This doesn't make sense: if any kind of wave is slowed down (for example, when passing into a denser medium, like from air to water), the wave speed does change. The property of waves that doesn't change when they go from one medium to another is the frequency (the rate at which the wave peaks go past). Since the energy of a photon (a `particle' of light) is a constant times the frequency, this means that the energy of light doesn't change as its speed changes. It doesn't matter whether you think about it as a wave or a particle. Books on light or sound (or any physics textbook) will have more information on waves. For more information about the wave-particle duality, you can check out any book on quantum mechanics or particle physics. There are many such books written for the general public, without a lot of math: your library probably has a few. Also try searching MadSci Network; we have quite a few questions and answers about both these topics. Pauline
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