Introduction

Summary

I see trees of green, red roses too,

I see them bloom for me and you,

and I think to myself What a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,

and I think to myself

What a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky

are also on the faces of the people goin' by.…*

Explanation of the various effects of light is a very elusive task. Although light has captured the imagination of human beings since the dawn of civilization, science has yet to deliver a single, comprehensive explanation of all its effects. The advanced theories that now exist create many new questions along with new answers. Part of the confusion can be blamed on our tendency to explain physical phenomena using the perception of our senses. Unfortunately, our senses do not tell the full story. Although we can see light, and even distinguish among some of its colors, we cannot see most of the radiation emitted by the sun. Even our ability to visually determine the brightness of light sources is limited by the rapid saturation of the eye retina. Our senses tell us that light propagates in straight lines, yet careful experiments have demonstrated that the trajectories of light can be bent by gravitation. We cannot even capture and store light.