Introduction
Light is something that everyone is familiar with. It comes from many sources, the main one being our sun, and it provides us with the energy needed for life. Without it, life as we know it would not exist.
We have learned to harness light and have found many different ways to utilize it, some of which we now take for granted. For example, we have mirrors to reflect light, and different types of lenses to alter our perception of it. The most common examples of this would be people who use glasses or contact lenses to see better, telescopes to see farther and microscopes to see objects hundreds or thousands of times larger than they actually are. Light can also be used for medicine and communication. The light from lasers is used to perform a number of surgical techniques. Many telephone cables are now being replaced by fiber optics, which carry an enormous amount of information in a small space.
In this section we will learn about light and its characteristics. We will explore the physics of light, how it reflects, refracts, diffracts and many other aspects. We will also learn about the history of the study of light, to put everything in its historical context.
