me and my friend are in an ongoing argument about whether or not light has mass and i thought i would put it on here to these what you guys think.
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
yes it does!!! how do you think plants do photosynthesis, light has protons in it =] which have to have mass, being a stoner i tend to think bout these things alot hahaI think people should say what that really mean on the internet, like instead of lol or lmao it should be lqtm or laughing quietly to myself =] -
Re: Does Light Have Mass?
Light is made of photons. I looked up 'photon' in Wikipedia and it said it has zero invariant mass.Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
Light does not have mass. Special Relatively provides equations that relate mass to velocity, in the form:
m(v) = m(stationary)/sqrt(1 - (v/c))
where m(stationary) is the mass of the object when it is stationary, v is the velocity of the object, and c is the speed of light. According to this formula, when v = c, or when an object is moving at the speed of light, it's mass will be it's stationary mass divided by zero, which is undefined. The limit of this equation as v->c is infinity, or, in other words, the mass of an object increases without bound as its speed approaches that of light.
Now, clearly, photons, which are the particles of light, move at the speed of light. Therefore, if they had any mass at all, that mass would be infinite. Therefore, Special Relativity tells us that photons are massless.Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
Yeah, light DOESN'T have mass. Know wonder this guy is a stoner.
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
wow...=] thats kool to know. good questionI think people should say what that really mean on the internet, like instead of lol or lmao it should be lqtm or laughing quietly to myself =]Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
it has no invariant mass i see but how about relativistic mass which is the mass associated with the theory of objects get more mass as they go faster, what I'm finding just keeps going in circles.Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
i think this is a question to ask ur science teacher... thats probably the most reliable sourcei have no sigComment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
how do i get my stats as my signiture? i tried puttin the code there but then it just shows the code instead of the blue box...what am i doin wrong? oh and it seems like somthing would need mass to start with in order to gain mass with speed, but idk =pI think people should say what that really mean on the internet, like instead of lol or lmao it should be lqtm or laughing quietly to myself =]Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
This is Critical Thinking!!!
If the thing in question, photon in this case, has no mass to begin with, it will not gain any.it has no invariant mass i see but how about relativistic mass which is the mass associated with the theory of objects get more mass as they go faster, what I'm finding just keeps going in circles.Comment
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
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Re: Does Light Have Mass?
The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes".
Light is composed of photons, so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": the photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass, and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons, it was known that light carries momentum and will exert pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass.Comment
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