Wave-particle duality is a fundamental fact of the Universe. But we don't see many objects moving around as waves. This is why it hurts when a golf ball hits you on the head: you and the golf ball are ...
The Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who was born 220 years ago last month, is famous for carving some mathematical graffiti into Dublin's Broome Bridge in 1843.
Ideas from quantum physics have seeped into popular culture over recent decades in a way they failed to for the first half ...
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his work on the wave-particle behavior of light, helping explain the photoelectric effect and spurring further development of quantum ...
Light's behavior seems counterintuitive. That is, until you figure out light is a wave. The way light behaves can seem very counterintuitive, and many physicists would agree with that, but once you ...
The dual nature of light—both wave and particle—serves as a powerful metaphor for the mysterious and shifting boundaries of reality itself. In quantum physics, experiments have shown that even after ...
Here, a calcite crystal is struck with a laser operating at 445 nanometers, fluorescing and displaying properties of birefringence. Unlike the standard picture of light breaking into individual ...
"These single atoms are like the smallest slits you could possibly build." For over 100 years, quantum physics has taught us that light is both a wave and a particle. Now, researchers at the ...
In 1676, by studying the motion of Jupiter's moon Io, Danish astronomer Ole Rømer calculated that light travels at a finite speed. Two years later, building on data gathered by Rømer, Dutch ...