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Jan 1, 1000
Ibn al-Haytham
Ibn al-Haytham was an Iraqi scientist who first proposed that light actually travels and has speed. Until then, people thought that light just appears out of nowhere. He said that light is many small particles travelling in straight lines, bouncing off objects and into our eyes. He also said that light has different speeds in dfferent substances. -
Rene Decsartes
He was a French philosopher and scientist who first proposed that white light is made up of all the colours. -
Galileo Galilei
Galileo tried to measure the speed of light by having his assistant stand on a nearby hill with a lamp. The experiment took place between two nearby hills and unfortunately, because they were too close to each other, the light traveled too fast to measure. -
Olaus Roemer
Danish astronomer Olaus Roemer the first person to attempt and somewhat succede to calculate the speed of light. He used the times of eclipses to find that light traveled at 225,000km/m. -
Christian Huygen
In 1960, Dutch scientist released his book called "Treatise on Light" in which he proposed a theory that light is actually a wave, not a line of particles. He also said that light slows down in glass or water which explains refraction. -
Young and Fresnel
From 1700~1800 many the idea of light being a wave developed. Thomas Young and Augustin Fresnel found patterns that light makes (when passing thorugh small spaces/holes/slits) that it can only do if it were a wave. -
Isaac Newton
In Isaac Newton's book "Opticks" that he wrote 1704, he explained his idea of light. Isaac Newton thought light traveled in particles and that this explained reflection and refraction. Also, he said light travels faster in denser materials. -
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin carried out an experiment in 1752 and found that elctricity can be conducted. He flew a kite out in a storm and attached a key to the string. He found that lightening had charged negative energy into the key. This way, he found positive and negative in electricity. -
Jean Foucault
A French Scientist named Jean Foucalt was able to calculate the speed of light accurately by bouncing light to and from a mirror in a second. He also used this experiment to measure the speed of light in water. He found that light moves slower in denser materials. -
Albert Einstein
This German genius scientist proposed that wave was a stream of particles and a wave. This idea shocked many but Eistein said that this is the only way the behaviour of light can be explained.
