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MOTION MOUNTAIN

LIGHT, CHARGES AND BRAINS - Motion Mountain

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what is light? 119<br />

Light can rotate<br />

macroscopic objects:<br />

Light can rotate<br />

tiny objects, such as<br />

carbon nanotubes:<br />

suspension<br />

wire<br />

Ref. 76<br />

circularly<br />

polarized<br />

light beam<br />

F I G U R E 73 Light can<br />

rotate objects (© A.C.<br />

Ferrari)<br />

F I G U R E 74 Umbrellas decompose white light: look at a small lamp<br />

through a black umbrella at night (© Wikimedia).<br />

by chemically attaching their ends to glass or Teflon spheres and then pulling them apart<br />

with such optical tweezers.<br />

But that is not all. In the last decade of the twentieth century, several groups even<br />

managed to rotate objects, thus realizing actual optical spanners. They are able to rotate<br />

particles at will in one direction or the other, by changing the optical properties of the<br />

laser beam used to trap the particle.<br />

In fact, it does not take much to deduce that if light has linear momentum, circularly<br />

polarized light also has angular momentum. In fact, for such a wave the angular<br />

Motion Mountain – The Adventure of Physics copyright © Christoph Schiller June 1990–November 2015 free pdf file available at www.motionmountain.net

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