Compare wave and particle theory. In which circumstances is each one used.
Compare wave and particle theory. In which circumstances is each one used.
The understanding of light has developed mainly since the 1600's. In 1666, Isaac Newton discovered that white light is made up of all colours. Using a prism, he found that each colour in a beam of white light could be separated. Newton proposed the theory that light consists of tiny particles that travel in straight lines through space. He called these particles corpuscles, and his theory became known as the corpuscular theory.
About the same time that Newton proposed his theory of light, the Dutch physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens suggested that light consists of waves. He proposed the wave theory to explain the behaviour of light. The corpuscular and wave theories appear to be completely opposite, and scientists argued about them for about 100 years. Then, in the early 1800's, the English physicist Thomas Young demonstrated the interference of light. He showed that two light beams cancel each other under certain conditions. As it is hard to understand how interference could occur with particles, most scientists accepted Young's experiment as proof of the wave theory of light.
