Section 2: The Wave Nature of Light

Like all waves, light diffracts around objects, has a wavelength and
frequency, and can be Doppler shifted.
. K W L
What I Know What I Want to Find Out What I Learned
Essential Questions
• How does diffraction demonstrate that light has wave properties?
• What are the effects of combining colors of light and mixing pigments?
• How do phenomena such as polarization and the Doppler effect occur?

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Vocabulary
Review New
• wavelength • diffraction
• primary color
• secondary color
• complementary color
• primary pigment
• polarization
• Malus’s law

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Education The Wave Nature of Light
Diffraction and the Wave Model
• The bending of light as it passes the edges of a barrier is called diffraction.

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Color
• When a narrow beam of sunlight or white light passes
through a glass prism, it splits into different colors.
• As white light crosses the boundary from air into glass
and back into air, its wave nature causes each
different color of light to be bent, or refracted,
at a different angle.
• This unequal bending of the different colors causes
the white light to be spread into a spectrum.
• Light has wave properties, and each color of light is associated with a wavelength.
• Light falls within the range of wavelengths from about 400 nm to 700 nm.

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Color
• White light can be formed by adding red,
green, and blue light in equal amounts.
• For this reason, red, green, and blue are each
called a primary color.
• This is called the additive color process.
• The primary colors can be mixed in pairs to
form three additional colors.
• The colors yellow, cyan, and magenta are
each called a secondary color, because each
is a combination of two primary colors.
• Complementary colors are two colors of
light that can be combined to make white
light.

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Color
• The color of an object depend on the
wavelengths present in the light that
illuminates the object, and on which
wavelengths the object absorbs and
which is reflects.
• The existence of dyes in a material
or pigments on its surface, give the
object color.
• A pigment that absorbs only one primary
color and reflects two from white light is called
a primary pigment.
• A pigment that absorbs two primary colors and
reflects one color is called a secondary pigment.
• Note that the primary pigment colors are the secondary colors. In
the same way, the secondary pigment colors are the primary colors.

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Polarization of Light
• Polarization is the production of light with a specific pattern of oscillation.
• When the electric field of a light wave oscillates in random directions, the light
is nonpolarized.
• The lines in the polarizer represent a polarizing axis. The light with the portion
of the electric field that oscillates parallel to the polarizing axis passes through,
while the light with the portion of the electric field that oscillates
perpendicular(angle is right angle=90)
to the axis is absorbed.
• If a polarizer is placed in a beam
of nonpolarized light, only the
components of the waves in the
same direction as the polarizing axis
can pass through.
• As a result, half of the total light
passes through, reducing the intensity
of the light by half.

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Polarization of Light
• Polarization can also occur when light is reflected, such as from a sheet of glass
or from a road.
• Polarized reflected light causes glare. Polarizing sunglasses reduce glare from
the polarized light reflected off roads.
• Photographers can use polarizing filters over camera lenses to block reflected
light.
• If you place a second polarizing filter in the path of the polarized light from the
first filter, the amount of light
transmitted through the second filter depends
on the angle between the two filters.
• The law that explains the reduction of light
intensity as light passes through a second
polarizing filter is Malus’s law.

Malus’s Law  2   1 cos2 θ

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Speed, Wavelength, and Frequency of Light

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Speed, Wavelength, and Frequency of Light
• For light of a given frequency traveling through a vacuum, wavelength is a
function of the speed of light (c), which can be written as λ = c/f.
• When a light source is moving relative to an observer, the light is Doppler shifted
and the frequency changes.
 v
f
Observed Light Frequency obs  f 1  
 c
• This equation can be used only for situations in which the axial relative speed is
much less than the speed of light (v << c).
• The equation for the Doppler effect for light is generally written in terms of
wavelength rather than frequency.
v 
Doppler Shift obs
λ  λ  Δ λ =  λ
c 
• This quantity is positive if they are moving away from each other or negative if
they are moving toward each other.

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Speed, Wavelength, and Frequency of Light
• When objects are moving apart, Δλ is positive, light is red-shifted, and frequency
decreases.
• When objects are moving toward each other, Δλ is negative, light is blue-shifted, and
frequency increases.
• Researchers can determine how astronomical objects are moving relative to Earth by
observing the Doppler shift of light from their spectra.
• In 1929, Edwin Hubble analyzed the emission spectra from many galaxies and found
that the spectral lines of familiar elements were red-shifted.
• Hubble concluded that all galaxies are moving away from Earth and that the universe
is expanding.

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Education The Wave Nature of Light
Review
Essential Questions
• How does diffraction demonstrate that light has wave properties?
• What are the effects of combining colors of light and mixing pigments?
• How do phenomena such as polarization and the Doppler effect occur?

Vocabulary
• diffraction • complementary color • polarization
• primary color • primary pigment • Malus’s law
• secondary color

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Education The Wave Nature of Light