Properties Of Light

There are many things that we do not know about light. We are not aware in its work and sometimes ignore its wonderful effect in our environment and our life. Maybe because we are not curios enough to take time and explain why such things happen or we are too much busy in our life that we don’t care in some simple admirably things that happens every day. Today, as I studied light I was surprise to know that there are still many things about light I don’t know and it is more becoming very interesting. 


Light can be scattered, reflected, refracted and diffracted. Solid substances that scatter light are said to be translucent. Transparent materials, such as glass, allow light to pass through them without scattering, so a clear image can be seen. Reflection also occurs when light hits the boundary between two materials. Some of the light hitting the boundary will be reflected into the first material. The very common example is when we look at the mirror, the image we see is identical of our appearance but with left and right reversed. Refraction on the other side is the bending of light when it passes from one kind of material into another. Diffraction happens when light passes through a slit with a size that is close to the light’s wavelength, the light will diffract, or spread out in waves.

As we observe in the video above, we saw how light can be reflected, refracted, scattered, and diffracted of dispersed. First in reflection, we observed that the re-emitted light bounces back into the medium from which it came. Another good example on this phenomenon is our reflection in the mirror. We can see the image exactly the same size of our image, exact color, size and even distance but it shows lateral inversion of our image. Reflection is governed by the “law of reflection” which states that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence.

Regular reflection (in which the direction of the reflected wave front is sharply delineated) is governed by the law that both the incident, or striking, rays and the reflected rays travel in directions making equal angles with the normal, a line perpendicular to the reflecting surface at the point of incidence; and that the rays lie in the same plane as the normal. These angles are called the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection. Rough surfaces reflect in many directions, and such reflection is called diffuse.

Refraction in other hand is the change of direction of the wave that occurs when wave of energy such as light passes from one medium to another of a different density. As above shown the laser bend and go with the flow of the water.

Dispersion of light is the separation of visible light or other electromagnetic waves into different wavelengths.  We can observe it when a prism is hit by light. It will disperse spectrum of colors. It is also the reason why we can see rainbow in the sky.

Scattering is different from reflection, where radiation is deflected in one direction, some particles and molecules found in the atmosphere have the ability to scatter solar radiation in all directions. The particles/molecules which scatter light are called scatterers and can also include particulates made by human industry. Scattering is a general physical process where some forms of radiation, such as light, sound, or moving particles, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by one or more localized non-uniformities in the medium through which they pass. In conventional use, this also includes deviation of reflected radiation from the angle predicted by the law of reflection. Reflections that undergo scattering are often called diffuse reflections and unscattered reflections are called specular (mirror-like) reflections.