How can light be both a wave and a particle?
Dear Straight Dope: What the heck is up with light being a wave/particle? I’ve read a lot about it, but none of it makes any sense. All I get is the same explanations over and over, no matter where I go. I can see how light can be a particle. That actually makes sense. But when I read about how it also is a wave (or at least sometimes behaves like a wave, or particle, depending on the circumstances), I just don’t get it. How can light be a wave? The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, offers the following definitions for waves as they apply to physics: • A disturbance traveling through a medium by which energy is transferred from one particle of the medium to another without causing any permanent displacement of the medium itself. • A graphic representation of the variation of such a disturbance with time. • A single cycle of such a disturbance. But if that’s what waves are, I don’t see how light can be a wave. Ocean waves, amber waves of grain, and so
