{"id":1753,"date":"2025-06-04T06:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T06:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2025-06-04T06:12:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T06:12:00","slug":"misconceptions-about-optics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2025\/06\/04\/misconceptions-about-optics\/","title":{"rendered":"Misconceptions about optics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"q-box qu-cursor--pointer qu-hover--textDecoration--underline b2c1r2a puppeteer_test_link\" title=\"www.quora.com\" href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-are-the-most-surprising-misconceptions-about-optics-you-encountered-among-professional-scientists\/answer\/Kip-Ingram\" target=\"_top\">One that just now surprised me<\/a> is the idea that mirror reflection can be explained in terms of excitation and decay of atomic energy levels when in fact it depends on the existence of a \u201csea\u201d of conduction band electrons that are not tied to any particular atom. (The excitation of atomic energy levels only happens at particular frequencies and because of the delay between absorption and re-emission does not lead to a coherent reflected wave.)<\/p>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-are-the-most-surprising-misconceptions-about-optics-you-encountered-among-professional-scientists\/answer\/Alan-Cooper-5\">(1002) Alan Cooper&#8217;s answer to What are the most surprising misconceptions about optics you encountered among professional scientists? &#8211; Quora<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One that just now surprised me is the idea that mirror reflection can be explained in terms of excitation and decay of atomic energy levels when in fact it depends on the existence of a \u201csea\u201d of conduction band electrons that are not tied to any particular atom. (The excitation of atomic energy levels only &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2025\/06\/04\/misconceptions-about-optics\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Misconceptions about optics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topics":[],"class_list":["post-1753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1755,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}