Background What is light?

Early Greek scholars thought that a person's eyes sent light rays to shine on the object they were looking upon. The exact opposite is what really happens. Whatever we look upon must send out the light for us to see. If you're outside reading, the sunlight shines on the page and then bounces (reflects) into your eyes. If you're sitting in your room reading a book with the light on, the light bounces (reflects) from your book to your eyes. Dark things usually soak up the light that falls on them with very little light bouncing off (reflected). That is why darker objects are harder to see. Light things bounce (reflect) more light. What do you think one of the best bouncers (reflectors) of light would be? A sheet of glass with a light-colored, shiny coating on the back.

Light travels through the air in straight lines. If it didn't there wouldn't be any shadows. The only way we can see an object is if rays of light hit the object and it then reaches our eyes. Reflection When light hits a surface, some of it bounces off or is reflected. Mirrors are very shiny surfaces designed to reflect nearly all the light that hits them. When you look in a flat mirror, you see a reflection of yourself which is the same size as you but back to front. When you look in a curved mirror (either concave or convex) your reflection is usually a different shape and size to you.

What is light? It's a kind of energy called "electromagnetic (EM) radiation" (but this kind of radiation is not harmful, except for an occasional sunburn). There are other kinds of EM radiation too (radio waves, microwaves, x-rays, etc.), but light is the part WE can see, the part that makes the rainbow. How does light travel? FAST and STRAIGHT. How FAST? About 186,000 miles per second [300,000 kilometers per second], so light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to go 93 million miles [149 million kilometers] to earth. How STRAIGHT? Perfectly straight, until something bends it. The straight paths of light are called LIGHT RAYS.

There are THREE basic ways to control light (these activities require Flash): Block it ... with something (this makes a shadow)

[This image requires the Flash plug-in] Reflect it (change its path with a mirror) This is called a REFLECTION. Click on the image below to see the interactive demo. Demo courtesy of Mr. David M. Harrison, Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Toronto.

Bend it Change its direction by making it pass into another transparent material of different density, like glass or water.This is called REFRACTION, and it's how lenses work. Click on the image below to see the interactive demo. Demo courtesy of Mr. David M. Harrison, Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Toronto.

The fine print: There are actually other ways to bend or deflect light, including diffraction gratings and holographic lenses. These depend on the wave nature of light, and are a little more difficult to explain. Scientists have also found that gravity can bend light, but it takes a very large object with strong gravity such as a star to bend light very much, so it's not an effect you see every day! Light is produced, controlled, and detected in so many ways around you!

... And many more things such as

contact lenses, lenses for TV, movie, and photographic cameras, fax machines, telescopes, microscopes and magnifiers,

medical systems other projectors (overhead, movie, slide, TV), weather and spy satellites, and solar energy systems (not to mention a little thing like PLANTS which use light to grow and to make the oxygen

300,000 kilometers (or 186,000 miles) per second. Reflection of Light - Reflection of light (and other forms of electromagnetic radiation) occurs when the waves encounter a surface or other boundary that does not absorb the energy of the radiation and bounces the waves away from the surface. The simplest example of visible light reflection is the glass-like surface of a smooth pool of water, where the light is reflected in an orderly manner to produce a clear image of the scenery surrounding the pool.. Refraction of Light - As light passes from one substance into another, it will travel straight through with no change of direction when crossing the boundary between the two substances head-on (perpendicular, or a 90-degree angle of incidence). However, if the light impacts the boundary at any other angle it will be bent or refracted, with the degree of refraction increasing as the beam is progressively inclined at a greater angle with respect to the boundary. As an example, a beam of light striking water vertically will not be refracted, but if the beam enters the water at a slight angle it will be refracted to a very small degree. If the angle of the beam is increased even further, the light will refract with increasing proportion to the entry angle.