Light is pretty cool. That is it is interesting and fascinating, not that it's temperature is particularly chilly. In fact, Archimedes was said to have made a weapon by concentrating light using mirrors. I've found references to others that have tried to recreate this trick including, the Mythbusters (twice) with mixed results. It has been demonstrated that it can be done, but if it was done is a question for history, not science. There have actually been two modern day occurrences that demonstrate the damage the sun can do when people aren't trying to deflagrate ancient warships. The first was in Las Vegas three years ago when a sunbather got more than he was looking for. The second was just last week when a man's car was parked in just the wrong spot and was exposed to 10 to 20 times the normal sunlight. Sixty Symbols on YouTube explains how it happens, as well as how a particular urban myth about Barbecuing pigeons got started.
Light also has the ability to travel really far distances. Even a small mirror can produce a flash that is visible for miles. My siblings and I all owned signal mirrors as kids capable of long range flashes and we took particular delight in finding new ways to direct the flashes. Light always reflects at the angle of impact (like the video explains), so the trick is just knowing how the light bounces. Interestingly enough, Derek, from Veritasium, explains how light is quantized. That is, it arrives in packets. As you back away from a light source the light appears to get dimmer and dimmer until your eyes can't pick it up anymore. But with sesitive enough eyes the sun would not truly go out, but would flicker. That's because the packets are having to cover a larger and larger area as they get further and further away form the source. Derek describes it much better - check out his video.
Now that I've looked at light, perhaps I should look at darkness. Does anybody know the speak of dark?
Light also has the ability to travel really far distances. Even a small mirror can produce a flash that is visible for miles. My siblings and I all owned signal mirrors as kids capable of long range flashes and we took particular delight in finding new ways to direct the flashes. Light always reflects at the angle of impact (like the video explains), so the trick is just knowing how the light bounces. Interestingly enough, Derek, from Veritasium, explains how light is quantized. That is, it arrives in packets. As you back away from a light source the light appears to get dimmer and dimmer until your eyes can't pick it up anymore. But with sesitive enough eyes the sun would not truly go out, but would flicker. That's because the packets are having to cover a larger and larger area as they get further and further away form the source. Derek describes it much better - check out his video.
Now that I've looked at light, perhaps I should look at darkness. Does anybody know the speak of dark?
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