In a dark room, I flick on the light switch. Light, traveling at the speed of light, goes from the bulb to the wall. I do not beleive it is possible for something to go from 0 to speed of light instantly. Therefore, the speed of light changed over time - acceleration! How long(short) does it take to go from 0 to speed of light? And is this acceleration constant?
Light travelles at a constant speed in a vacume Therefor no acceleration But Light has to get to this speed so what is the inital acceleration of light
Light does not behave like a physical object in this regard. It is energy and so it instantly travels at the highest velocity possible within that medium. (Light does travel more slowly through water and air than through a vacuum.) On a different topic, you could figure out how long it takes for the light to be generated once the switch is flipped and the electricity heats the filament (or excites the gas in a fluorescent bulb) to generate the photons of light.
gentle alterations direction AND velocity while it is going with the aid of a lens. the two a sort of count huge sort as acceleration, considering the fact that by making use of definition acceleration is the vector fee of replace of velocity. If an merchandise has an acceleration, then in accordance to F=ma, gentle has to have mass. I fail to work out your reasoning there. F=ma easily does not mean that something that improve up has to have mass.
The reason you don't believe that light can go from 0 to 300,000 km/s in an instant is because you are applying your intuition as a human being on rules of motion for MASSLESS elementary particles. Given that photons (aka light as particles) have zero mass, they don't have inertia to overcome like you and I or anything material that we are accustomed to (i.e. driving a car). So yeah, light goes from 0 to speed of light instantly! There is no acceleration. The speed is constant. BTW, this is a property of the vacuum space, not a property of photons (in other words, all zero mass particles travel at this speed, C, the speed of light in vacuum).
