Comment on Can you have an infinitely long wavelength of light? Or is there some maximum?
Saleh@feddit.org 3 days ago
I think your terminology is a bit mixed up. Light is a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see, plus infrared and UV often also being referred to as “light”.
As for the properties, they don’t fundamentally differ across the spectrum. The longer the wavelength, the less energy and the shorter the wavelength, the more energy.
As for the shortest theoretically possible wavelength, we are probably in the area of a Planck length
The Planck length is about 10^-20^ times the diameter of a proton.
MartianSands@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
No, it’s not. In physics, we call the entire spectrum “light”, because it’s all fundamentally the same thing.
We can talk about “visible light”, but that’s a subset of light in general. Microwaves, radio waves, x-rays, gamma radiation, and any other section of the spectrum you can think of are all light
Saleh@feddit.org 3 days ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light
I didn’t know that some physicists choose such confusing terminology. Electromagnetic radiation is the more clear term and i have learned it as such in school, e.g. light being a part of the electromagnetic spectrum and generally speaking of electromagnetic radiation rather than light.
LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Cause things get named CENTURIES before we understand them, and as we learn more, sometimes it makes sense to rename them, sometimes it is so engrained in daily life nobody would use the new names.