If you ask any school or college going student that what is light? You will probably get a answer that light is a form of energy which travels as a electromagnetic wave.But do we know what this terms are means.So today I am going to explain briefly the history of understanding about light.
From the beginning of science human wanted to explain the nature of light and understand all about it.The first step in this field was made my great Greek Philosopher Euclied he consider light as a rectilinear stream of three which emitted from our eyes.This theory was remained for almost 1300 years until ancient Arabian scientist IBN-AL-HAITAM consider light as a streams of small tiny particles coming out from our eye and the same theory was given by Sir Issac Newton.After describing Gravity Newton has a very good popularity so everyone take this theorem right but there is a major problem in this theorem that if the particle of light comes out from our eyes we must have a vision in dark also.
Then the young Dutch scientist Christian Hygens proposed light travel as a wave just like a water wave travel when a stone is thrown to it.In the year 1802 from the famous young double slit experiment the wave nature of light was established.After then many phenomenon like Interference Diffraction Polarisation Proved the wave nature of light.
Micheal Faradey
Then two fundamental question remains that what is the speed of light and light is a wave of what?This two fundamental question was answered by young physicists Micheal farade who gave the theory of electromagnetic induction and from this theory and some mathematical calculation James Clerk Maxwell told that light is a combination of two mutually perpendicular wave and it's speed is 3×10^8m/s.So wave nature was took all over the world but in the year 1885 Hertz found something that contradict with the wave theory of light.That was the photoelectric effect(The total study of photoelectric effect will be given another day) and wave theory was unable to explain the photoelectric effect.This phenomenon was explained by the great Einstein for which he assume the light as a stream of small particle called photon for which he got the Nobel prize in the year 1922.
James Clerk Maxwell
So then Scientiests concluded that light can behave as a wave or as particle depending on the situation from here comes the great Wave particle duality.And it is explained by Quantum mechanics at any particular case what nature of the light should be taken.
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