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Home > News > Say 'cheese'? No, say 'quantum mechanics.'

December 30th, 2009

Say 'cheese'? No, say 'quantum mechanics.'

Abstract:
Getting a digital camera for Christmas? Before you fire it up to capture Uncle Wally's fateful fifth trip to the punch bowl, take a moment to picture this: You've got a genuine scientific marvel in your mitts. In fact, it took nothing less than two Nobel prizes and a revolution in physics in order for you to point and shoot.

Why? Because to take a filmless picture, your camera or camcorder relies on, um, quantum mechanics. In particular, it exploits the fact -- revealed by Albert Einstein himself -- that a beam of light, which behaves like a wave in some circumstances, acts like a bunch of separate particles in other circumstances. (If that seems infuriatingly contradictory, suck it up. It's just how we do things in this cosmos. Or go complain to the management.)

Source:
washingtonpost.com

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