Can there be anything more fantastic, more riveting, more physics-y, than the photon?
2015 is the International Year of Light, and TPT and AAPT are part of the celebration, http://www.light2015.org/! Don your rainbow glasses, grab a friend, and join the fun by exploring the photons all around you together.
Mass-less particles or medium-less waves, the reality is much more deeply hued than either of these pale metaphors suggests. In fact, I am often struck more by what light is definitely not than by what it objectively is—it is certainly not a classical particle, otherwise your rainbow glasses wouldn't exhibit the beautiful colors via interference fringes, nor is it merely a classical wave since it arrives in a photo-detector in quantal clumps after traveling from the Sun through empty space.
Spartan, yet subtle, elegant, yet powerful, light eludes concise description while simultaneously revealing so many of the mysteries of the...
