Page 636 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

THE EXTERNAL WORLD BEHIND QUANTUM PHYSICS

Light: A Form of Energy

ax Planck’s discovery shows that light exhibits the properties of both a wave and a
particle. Since Planck’s day, countless experiments and observations have revealed
M this as an incontrovertible fact. That being so, in order to better comprehend this de-
finition we can refer to another kind of waves, those that occur in water. Those waves are not
made up of water, but are made up of the energy transmitted through the water. If a wave mo-
ves from one end of a swimming pool to another, this does not mean that the water in one side
of the pool passes to the other. The water remains where it was. Only the wave itself moves,
transmitting energy. When you move your hand in a bathtub filled with water you produce a
small wave in the form of ripples, because you are imparting energy to the water. That energy
manifests in the water in the form of a wave.
All waves are energy travelling and generally are trasmitted by the use of a medium—wa-
ter, in this example.

Light waves, understandably, are rather more complicated than waves in water and do not
require a medium in order to travel. They can travel through an empty vacuum. Light is de-
31
pendent on matter only at the initial stage. Once light has been emitted, it can move indepen-

dently with no material element. Light energy can be found even where there is no matter at all.
Light and heat are different forms of the energy known as electromagnetic radiation. All the
various forms of electromagnetic radiation act in the form of energy waves in space. Again, this
can be compared—albeit simplistically—to ripples created when a stone is thrown into a lake. In
the same way that those ripples may be of different width and amplitude, so electromagnetic ra-

diation can have different wavelengths.
There are very great differences between the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
While some may be kilometers long, other wavelengths are smaller than a trillionth of a centi-

634 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4