The Nature of Light Study Guide

For the test over light you should know:

• the meaning of the terms luminous, opaque, transparent, translucent, photon, coherent light, population inversion, monochromatic, luminous, illuminated, umbra, penumbra, incandescent, hologram, stimulated emission, photometer, interferometer, luminous flux, luminous intensity.
• The two theories of the nature of light, their strengths and weaknesses and their main proponents
• the modern view of the nature of light.
• The contributions of Galileo, Roemer, Michelson, Maxwell, Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, de Broglie, Huygens, Newton, Foucalt covered in this chapter.
• what the photoelectric effect is, and the three laws of photoelectric emission.
• Huygen's principle.
• the speed of light.
• how light intensity is affected by distance from the source.
• the principles behind laser operation.
• how frequency and photon energy are related.
• the 2 componenets of electromagnetic waves and how they are situated.
• the order of the major groups in the e-m spectrum (in terms of frequency).
• the type of spectrum emitted by gas discharge tubes.
• the series names for the hydrogen spectrum.

And be able to calculate:

• the wavelength of an e-m wave if given the frequency.
• the wavelength of light given the photon energy.