photon is my name I know your name, but do you know mine? When speaking about light, this is necessary – because that is my specialty. My name is Photon: sometimes I am also called a light particle. Photons are quantities of energy that are released when electrons move from a higher orbit to a lower one around the atom.
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ith these words, I also described our task: ensuring that the electrons revolve around the nucleus of an atom in an orderly way. Indeed, we run the household within the atom. Together with the electrons, we, photons, are the most important, elementary particles in the universe. Without photons, there would be no universe, no world, no human being, no atom. I almost forgot to tell you our family name, electromagnetic force, but you may have understood this already. Our family is one of the four families of forces that ensure that the world continues to exist. Two forces work in the nuclei of the atom: the weak and the strong (or nuclear) force and two outside of it, gravitation and the electromagnetic force. Not without pride, I might say that my family is the most important one by far. In his book What Darwin could not know, Gerrit Teule beautifully described our work. He states that the cooperation between the four forces may be compared to performing a play. The two atomic forces form the wings. This is an important, yet passive element. The stage floor corresponds to gravitation that enables the performance, but on stage, it is the electromagnetic force that does the tricks. Sometimes, you may compare us with postmen, who deliver energy packages (information), although a bit faster than ordinary postmen: Photons rush with a speed of 300,000 km per second through the universe. Seen in
14 Pentagramme 6/2011
Don Relyea, Cityscapes with Ladders and Helipads II. Abstract
the perspective of the enormous distances in the universe, we are nevertheless sometimes underway for a very long time. The Hubble space telescope shows constellations, the light of which has been underway for many years. This resembles ‘Seasonal Greetings’ from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. We are best known in the form of light. By light, I do not only mean the visible light with all the shades from red to blue – this is
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