Text Set: The Science of Light

I've always been fascinated by light, and in recent years I'm constantly amazed by its properties and how integral it has become to our daily lives. I've assembled this text set as an introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum and to how we came to know it.

9 Light Poems

By Jackson Mac Low

http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lmaclow1.htm

These nine poems aren’t scientific, but have powerful imagery and spark recollections of all the ways light affects our lives.

History of research on light

http://photonterrace.net/en/photon/history/

This page shows an overview time-line of the great minds who explored the science of light, from Aristotle to Einstein.

Alhazen: Early experiments on light

https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Hidden/59/Alhazen:-Early-experiments-on-light/170

Excerpted from a teaching module on the Visionlearning website, this is the story of ibn al-Haytham, also known as Alhazen, and how he came to understand the phenomenon of light in the 11th century.

Galileo and the Telescope

https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/galileo-and-the-telescope

This is the story of Galileo and what he learned when he first aimed a telescope at the stars.

Newton's Prism Experiment

A video by MIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uucYGK_Ymp0

This video recreates, briefly, a couple of Sir Isaac Newton’s expiriments with light using prosms and lenses. The end of the video references Newton’s book, Opticks, found in full on the Project Gutenberg website, so I’ve set that next in my list.

Opticks

By Isaac Newton

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33504

This is the full text of Sir Isaac Newton’s book on optical theory, first published in 1704. It is the master work on optics by the master himself and describes his experiments and conclusions. It includes a good deal of geometry and is somewhat esoteric, but a valuable challenge at any level.

EM Spectrum Properties

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EM_Spectrum_Properties_edit.svg

A large image that shows the spectrum and its properties.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~blackman/ast104/spectrum.html

This webpage shows some additional information about the full spectrum of light.

Light: Particle or a Wave?

https://www.olympus-lifescience.com/en/microscope-resource/primer/lightandcolor/particleorwave/

This webpage gets in-depth on the subject of whether light can be a particle or a wave, or both.

The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

By Carl Sagan

http://www.bigear.org/vol1no2/sagan.htm

In this essay, Dr Carl Sagan discusses the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Although not specifically about light, it shows that light, in it’s many forms, is what connects us with the rest of the universe.