I came across an article comparing the human eye with a digital camera. The eye was far beyond the camera as for now. But we do not know how long it will take before the camera catching the eye. While the camera has a maximum capacity of 12 megapixels, the eye is estimated to be over 500 megapixels!
The article has me thinking about light and the eye. I have read that light is not just wave form of energy, it has a particle aspect. This makes for duality in the nature of light. Light when by 2 vertical narrow slits creates bright and dark stripes on the screen due to a malfunction of the split wave. The bands can not by the particle theory of light. On the other hand, dispersion of the reflected light is not the wave theory. How can the 2 aspects are together? This duality May, an easy-to-digest approach for Boffin, but it has my head spinning.
I learned that the particles of light, the name "Photon" by Gilbert N. Lewis had amazing properties. It always moved at an incredible speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, never stop. It did not matter. But it had momentum and energy! Even if the photons hit a surface, and it would dispel it out in all directions, but they would not lose any speed after the impact! And it was this scattering of photons from the surface of an object activated an eye to see it!
It struck me that the impact of a photon impinging on the retina could registers a sensation in the brain lead vision! This led me to live, how the eye functions. I looked around my well-lit room. I saw a framed picture on the wall. The scattered photons from the painting visible to my eye. Every minute part of the painting was sending a scattered photons to a point on the surface of my retina, where a light receptor was his energy and send a message to my brain. When light reflected from a red portion of the surface, the photons, which meets our eye excited, only the red-color-sensitive receptors on the retina. The receptors for the collection of blue and yellow colors were not enthusiastic. Suggests that there are different types of photons of different colors. I realized that millions of photons must be included to the picture frame in my head. I shook my head a little. I could see the frame, without that as I moved. For each new position, a new series of millions of photons were my retina meet. How many photons are there? I wondered.
A quick research on the retina showed that the eye has receptors on the retina, called the rods for dim light sensor and 3 types of cones for color sensors for red, blue and green light. These receptors were similar pixel sensor in a digital camera. The camera had me a comparison figure of 500 megapixels for the eye! Multiply this number with 3, one for each color, I came to a colossal figure of 1500 mega-photons. These photons were myriad effects on my eye at least 24 times per second for me to see without a flicker! And the eye can see by my students, the small aperture on my cornea, barely a few millimeters in diameter. The room is much bigger. It is therefore perhaps one million times more photon beams on! And what about the garden and the street, the city and the country and the world! As my brain started to buzz, revolts my opinion, "Stop. Just stop there, no more. I agree there are an infinite number of photons in this whole world."
wonder I was Struck with the stunning quality of these photons. What are they? And where do they come from. This culminated in the fundamental question of how is the light. Apart sunlight, its natural source, I searched for the history of the torch. The first was by incineration. Fire. Igniting wood generates fire and fire results in the light. I went through the successive phases of the arc lamp, incandescent light, Xenon flash, and the modern light-emitting diodes (LED). Initially, it appeared to me that light was associated with high temperatures. It was as if the material was white with rage and Crying Out Loud a desperate throw of light energy in an effort to cool. The LED, however, are low temperature light makers when their light was bluish. They need electricity, no heat, get out of light. In both cases, there were spending on energy to create more light and energy, the greater the intensity of light.
What is the measure of the intensity? I knew that electric light bulbs are rated in watts. But that I found was the measure of the performance, the lamp, but as the lamp was an inefficient conversion of electricity to light, it is not a true measure of the light. Light is measured in watts per square meter and in micromoles per sq meters per second, the measure of photons. A unit of Einstein is a mole of photons, the 6 x 10 ^ 23 photons per sq meters per second and is equivalent to around 2250 watts per sq. m. The amount of solar energy on the clock falls on the surface of the earth is 168 watts per sq. m. This corresponds about 5 x 10 ^ 22 photons per sq meters per second! The number of photons is 5, followed by 22 zeros per second for every square meter of the Earth! And the surface of the sun is 250 trillion square meters! It is this large number of photons from the sun each second, the nature so beautiful. It is these photons, the light, the properties of the earth and makes them visible to our eyes! Thanks to them, that we can see the blue sea and the red roses! This very photosynthesis protons catalyze the process by which plants make food for us. There was no doubt in my mind that without food we could not live without light and we could not see. We owe it all to the photons.
The photons are so completely invisible, that we can not see them at all. We can only experience its effect, if our eyes comes in their path. So, while trillions and trillions of photons are blasting along the entire atmosphere on Earth, we do not know of their existence. They show us, through Objects reflection on the surface, but they keep behind the scene. It is totally selfless service they are rendering for life on the planet! Providence has really blessed us with the sun and its photons! It adds that even photons on the planet, particularly through the lights in the night. He fills up night-time place with the photons of electric lamps and bulbs!
You can see more than that! He fills the atmosphere with a tremendous amount of radio waves. There are 3.3 billion mobile phone users in the world. Satellite communications, GPS systems - there are a multitude of different waves, caused by man filling the room. But they are not particles. They are pure electromagnetic wave forms. Photons are something special. Perpetual motion, no loss of speed on reflection, no mass, quality, color, silent and subservient, responsible for the vision of insects and animals, for the growth of plants for our diet, enrich our lives every single moment. We take it for granted, but these protons should be recognized for their life-saving kindness and valuable contribution to our eyesight indispensable!
Dilip Dahanukar is an IIT Powai alumnus. He is an experienced author having written 2 science fiction books. He has written articles on the net, which are widely read. Married to an artist, he is an avid gardener and enjoys nature.Visit the webpage of the author: Dilip Dahanukar.
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