BELIEVE ME NOT! - - A SKEPTIC's GUIDE
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The simplest thing waves do is to REFLECT off flat surfaces.
Since billiard balls do the same thing quite nicely,
this is not a particularly distinctive behaviour of waves -
which was probably one of the reasons why Newton was convinced
that light consisted of particles.14.17
The reflection of waves looks something like Fig. 14.9.
Figure:
Reflection of a wave from a flat surface.
|
The incoming wave vector
makes the same angle with
the surface (or, equivalently, with the direction normal
to the surface) as the outgoing wavevector
:
|
(14.41) |
This is the most important property of reflection, and it can
be stated in words thus:
Footnotes
- . . . particles.14.17
- He
was actually correct, but it is equally true that light
consists of waves. If you are hoping that these apparently
contradictory statements will be reconciled with common sense
by the Chapter on QUANTUM MECHANICS, you are in for a
disappointment. Common sense will have to be beaten into
submission by the utterly implausible facts.
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Jess H. Brewer -
Last modified: Sun Nov 15 21:31:49 PST 2015