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When can light change direction?

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Anonymous

13y ago
Updated: 8/16/2019

A simple means is to use a mirror (or some other reflective material). A ray of light will reflect and refract to varying degrees as it interacts with surfaces.

You can apply basic geometry with optics laws to see how you can change the path of a ray of light. Snell's Law gives the relationship between direction and different surfaces.

A more interesting means of changing light direction involves something about black holes. May be their distortion of space or time, or simply their apparent vast gravity. I believe we've managed to show that phonons (light) have mass, so you could use gravity to deflect them. I'm pretty sure photons also have magnetic and electric fields, so a sufficiently radical magnetic field would be handy too.

Now, to pick on your choice of words, light "can" change direction any time something that changes its direction occurs. In other words, it's not a function of time.

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Wiki User

13y ago

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How do i change a direction of a light beam?

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