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tags: #physics #light #waves #hub-note

The study of light and its properties has been central to physics, revealing deep truths about the nature of reality, energy, and the universe itself. Initially understood as simple rays, our understanding evolved to see light as a wave, and eventually as something much more complex.

This hub connects the key concepts in our understanding of light as a wave phenomenon:

• Wave Properties of Light: Describes the fundamental characteristics of light, including its speed, frequency, and wavelength, and how they relate.
• Double-Slit Experiment: The quintessential experiment demonstrating the wave-like nature of light (and later, matter), revealing the strange reality of quantum superposition.
• Electromagnetic Waves: The discovery that light is a self-propagating wave of electric and magnetic fields, a part of a much broader electromagnetic spectrum.
• Luminiferous Aether: The hypothesized, but ultimately non-existent, medium through which light waves were thought to travel.
• Michelson-Morley Experiment: The famous null-result experiment that failed to detect the aether, paving the way for Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.

Reference

Coursera, "Question Reality: Matter"