• Question: Are shadows made of atomes?

    Asked by zoeh2o to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 19 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      No. Shadow is an area behind the object. But it can contain atoms or not. Atoms are physical, they have volume and mass (and other things) the shadow doesn’t.

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Somehow, I don’t think so.

      Light represents a wave (or a photon) in good, old fashioned science, so what you are seeing in a shadow is light of a different wavelength from that which is not in shadow. This probably means that a shadow isn’t solid and is unlikely to get up and hit you.

      Nevertheless, this is a good question because it makes you think before answering. Keep asking these sort of questions because this is how you get to understand the world around you.

      Having said all that, you might want to check out the “Double slit experiment” in Wikipedia.

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