Well, here I am making a game that I want to be scientifically accurate, so I come to the intelligently derranged masses of PTT. My question revolves around light:

We all know that any prjectile traveling at any speed (unsupported) will always travel in an arc. This is true for a baseball, bulllet, and even, possibly, light? Keep in mind that light is protons that travel at asountingly high speeds, and can bounce off certain surfaces easier than others, but down it curv over large distances. Even just a minute curve would make or break my theory. You see, in many games involving lasers and suck, they always have big balls of light that get shot out of cannons and fall back down to earth. Now, I can understand the slowing down of such particles, but what I cannot understand is the curve. I know light can bend, but is this the same as a steady arc? Please respond, if not you may have to suffer through a scientifically inaccurate game.

No idea :P

Every mass has gravitational attraction. The earth's is so large that usually other mass attractions are negligable.

Is that pure light or is that some sort of stuff that is giving off light?

Is light composed of particles or is it an energy wave?

If you plug the speed and mass of light into the standard projectile path equation its arc is very slight in the context of terrestrial dimensions. Have fun determining the mass of light. ;)

Last edited: Saturday, September 16, 2006 at 5:10:01 PM

light can bend ...it can be diffracted, reflected, refracted or interfered. ;)

Diffraction - the bending of waves, esp. Sound and light waves, around obstacles in their path :P
Reflection - bouncing off of a surface :)
Refraction - the change of direction of a ray of light, in passing obliquely from one medium into another in which its wave velocity is different XD
Interference - one light wave bumps into another and they combine or repel from eachother %)

Light will eventually bend because of an obsticle or another light ray. Take shadows for example...light bends around the object and creates the edge of a shadow. I imagine light to bend more abruptly than a nicely curved arc. In refraction light bends when entering a new medium. With the straw in the glass of water test you can see that light does not gradually curve the straw, it abruptly bends it.

Willebrord Snell :P discovered the law of refraction which is now identified as Snell's law. Look at this site for more info: Snell's Law!

^ Ah, but what I am talking about requires you to think of light as an arrow... A very fast arrow that emits different types of radiation. Try, light can be bent, but bending the arrow, or having it shoot against a hard surface so it bounces off is different than having the arrow being shot up and knowing it will come back down.

@ Blind cide-

Thank you for that, New weapon idea added.

I beleive, but don't quote me on this (heh), that light is masses of energy particals that releases enegy field such as gamma radiotion. OR, now that I think about it, light could just be protons emiting energy that gives the illusion of different colors and contrasts. This has definately goteen my mind thinking up a storm. Thank you.

Hmmm...we know that light bends when it enters a substance at an angle due to refraction...hmmm...you have given me much to think about pgg...but I believe it doesn't exactly curve like an arc...I will need to get back on you on this one.

-AO

In astronomy, stars visually behind black holes are often seen beside their actual position. Their light arrives to us after bending around the black hole. I think the word is parallax, but I could be wrong. Someone here will remember.
http://www.answers.com/parallax&r=67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy#Stellar_astronomy

Does this count as light curving?

^yes BC that is definently a distinct field of physics that I studied at university.

Light does bend. Photons do have mass and therefore are effected by gravity, as Tally describes above.
Photos are weird, they behave as both a particle and also an electromagnetic wave - like radio waves.
Its called wave-particle duality.

So yeah light and lasers will bend similar to a bullets projectile however the effects are so miniscule that they are almost undetectable on earth.
Really small particles like photons do weird stuff and dont obey the normal rules of physics.
They have their own rules - the study of which is "Quantum Mechanics"

It messed with my head too much so I did mechanical engineering instead of electronic engineering.

Anyone heard of Schrodinger's cat? Google it and learn something about quantum mech

CHeers

Squid

^ Thank you squidring. Now, keep in mind that even if it is a miniscule amount, it is still an amount. Thusly, when you slow light down enough to actually do damage, the curve will get steeper. Thanks all.

This means that in order for a ray to bend, the speed of light has to change. The speed of light isn't a constant, but it only changes a tiny bit.

@Tally, Parallax has to do with the two different angles you see with your eyes. Close one eye and focus on an object. Now open that one and close the other to see the object in a different angle. 8o

@proud gaming geek, thinking along the lines of black holes... I learned that the gravitational pull of the black hole is not enough to conquer the mass of light. Baseballs and bullets bend in a ray due to gravity, right? This does not apply to light because nothing has the gravitational pull > light mass. I do not think light can bend but I can possibly break (with an abrupt sharp change of direction) because prisms do not nicely bend light. They break it. Same with everything else. I think that is the answer.

No light bending, only light breaking!! Does that help wise guy?

Last edited: Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 1:55:40 PM

^ Wrong! A blackhole is the ONLY thing that is powerful enough to suck light in. This is why they are called BLACK holes. In movies, the ring around them is billions of trillions of matter particles that are being gravitated towards the black hole.

In gravitational fields, space actually curves. Light always travels in a straight line, and therefore when encountering a curve in space, it also curves. Black holes are extreme intances of a gravitational field, and therfore they afect light in a much more dramatic manner, even "sucking it in" to their centers.

Not with earths gravitational pull

Light is actually made up of photons

Thats maybe because it could be a plasma ray. Which is mass in a gas state.

Just to let you know light is massless. The laser density all depends on the photons being same
wavelength and phase.

Last edited: Monday, September 18, 2006 at 12:45:24 PM

Laser light is made by concentrated photon
amplified by mirrors reflecting back and forth
in a medium (like a ruby rod) to release other
photons of the same energy.

Which release a tightly uniform stream of photons.

This is what causes the damage. Not mass