Timeline for Does light in vacuum actually travel at the speed of light?
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5 events
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| Feb 29, 2016 at 20:17 | comment | added | Fabrice NEYRET | ... as the interference between the source field and the reacting field produced by dielectrics (if I remind correctly). And this is also a perfect example of why it can be missleading sometime to think of light as photons (where is the "travelling photon" in the present case ? :-) ) | |
| Feb 29, 2016 at 7:52 | comment | added | Peter Diehr | @Joshua Lin: light in a transparent media (a) travels in the forward direction; (b) is coherent; (c) is scattered: the process is called forward coherent scattering. We know the light travels in the forward direction because it travels through the media; we know it is coherent because it can form an image cattied from the other side; we know it is scattering because it is consistent with the Huyghens model of wave propagation; that includes, as a special case, Snell's law. So the light travels at c everywhere inside the media, but the wavefront is slowed by the interference effects. | |
| Feb 29, 2016 at 7:41 | comment | added | JPattarini | @JoshuaLin the absorption/re-emission hypothesis is incorrect. See the responses to this question: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/11820/… | |
| Feb 29, 2016 at 7:19 | comment | added | QCD_IS_GOOD | I seem to remember an explanation for why light slows down in mediums such as water being that it doesn't (i.e. it still travels at c, the only reason it appears to go slower is because it has to be absorbed and re-emitted by all the water particles as it travels). I can't remember if this interpretation is correct or not though | |
| Feb 29, 2016 at 7:14 | history | answered | Fabrice NEYRET | CC BY-SA 3.0 |