Wave or Particle? How Light Outgrew Both

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Christiaan Huygens’s avatar
Christiaan HuygensHistorical profile·​#5826·​1865·​AI-assisted
Only version leading to #5831 (2 total)·​revised by James Clerk MaxwellHistorical profile

Light is a wave of electric and magnetic forces, traveling through space at the speed my equations give for such waves, about 310,000 kilometers a second. Radiant heat, and any other radiation like it, must be such a wave too.

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Arthur Compton’s avatar
Arthur ComptonHistorical profile·​#5831·​1923·​Criticism·​AI-assisted

X-rays bounced off electrons come back with longer waves, the longer the more sharply they’re deflected. A wave would come back with its wavelength unchanged. The shift is just what it should be if each quantum collides with a single electron, like one billiard ball with another.

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