My little sister has a question...?

Question

My 12 year old sister called me yesterday asking me how she finds out 'who invented light?'

I tried to google it but I cant pin it down to a specific.....does anyone know the answer?

I don't appreciate being called 'stupid', all I am doing is asking a question that my sisters TEACHER put to the pupils....unless she got confused when asking the question....but your input was classic...so thanks!

Answer 1

Well, either the answer is "God" or you should correct it to "who discovered," not "who invented." As to who discovered light, that would be the first caveman, I suppose.

But perhaps what she really wants to know is who discovered the scientific properties of light, and there we have a modern name: Albert Einstein. His E=mc(2) is actually a description of the nature of light's relationship to mass, and is therefore about as precise as you are going to get regarding the nature of light. He also did work on other aspects of light which are older, such as spectrum analysis.

If someone called you stupid for asking such a fundamental question, they are just plain rude. Fundamental questions need constant review, just to get people started thinking. They are not stupid.

Answer 2

Nobody invented light.

Light is an electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength such that our eyes can perceive it.

It can be formed in various ways, IE in the stars like our sun, so it has existed at least since the earliest stars. It is generally associated with high temperatures, but can be formed chemically or biologically.

Human beings alone of the animals generate light artificially. This has been so since prehistoric times with various kinds of fire, brands, candles, lanterns etc, until the invention of the electric light bulb.

Some deep sea creatures generate their own light. This is cold bio luminescence.

There are many claimants to the invention of electric light bulb:
Lodygin - 1874
James Bowman Lindsay - 1864
Heinrich Gobel - 1854
seem to be the earliest. If this is what the question is about, look these people up in WIKIPEDIA.

Edison and Swan are much later.

Answer 3

As others have said the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison.

Light (which is a form of electromagnetic radiation) was originally split by Isaac Newton. However there have been a lot of other important discoveries about light. If you type in electromagnetic radiation into wikipedia or other search you should come up with lots more information.

However I would stick with Edison and Newton as an answer for a 12 year old.

Hope this helps

Answer 4

There are two main perspectives:

1) That there used to be a bunch of raw materials floating around in space and they for no particular reason exploded, producing the first light and that it is a natural occurrence that ensues when energy is released from an atom.

2) It was created on the very first day ever (Genesis ch 1) and that it is produced when atoms put off energy.

Either way, we (humans) weren't present at the event and cannot say with absolute certainty exactly what happened. We can however say that the universe as we know it is in a constant state of decay. So if everything is breaking down, then it stands to reason that it had to be built up at one point in time.

This is a decision everyone has to make for themselves, but I hope I at least got your sister and yourself pointed in the right direction.

Answer 5

Light was not invented. It has always been around.

If you are talking about light bulbs, then Thomas A Edison is your man. He began work on the lightbulb in 1850, and by 1879 was done. It was patented by him in 1880. In 1878 he founded the Edison Electric Light Co, and after a lot of wheeling, dealing buy-outs and sales, the various other compaines involved (Swan, brush etc) finally merged in 1892 to become General Electric.

If you are talking about who realised what light is, then Isaac Newton is your man. In 1664, Newton was still a student when he discovered that light is made of several colours and investigated prisms and light refraction. He had studied works by Robert Boyle, Robert Boyle and Rene Descartes. Needless to say back then, that this was not a popular notion.

Answer 6

Light affects everything. Without it, there would be nothing. Since the days of the ancient Greeks, many have wondered where this life-giving resource comes from and how it is created. Up until the 1900s, there were many theories regarding light, but no certain ideas. It was only during the twentieth century that light became more understood
One of the earliest theories dates back to the fifth century B.C. Greek philosopher Impedes proposed that light was something that the eye emanated. When objects were within the field of the eye's light flow, they interacted with the light and were transmitted to the mind of the viewer, causing sight. Plato, another Greek philosopher, had several ideas about light. One agreed with his fellow philosopher, Impedes. Another was that light sources gave off particles. One idea regarded a change occurring between the source of light and the object struck by its rays.

It wasn't until the mid-1600s that the Greeks' theories of light were questioned. It was Robert Hooke, an English physicist, who came up with a different theory about the composition of light. He suggested that light was made up of waves. Later Christian Huygens took up the theory and expanded it. He said that light waves leaving a light source were the result of tiny wavelets, each radiating out from a point on the wave. This theory of the progression of waves is known as Huygens' Principle

Answer 7

Jopesh Wilson Swan invented the light bulb and not Thomas Edison as people generally believe

Answer 8

First of all you must know dat light was not invented. The light bulb was invented by sir Thomas Alwa Edison. Light is in nature. and it is god's creation. And light is afterall a name like how adam named all the living beings during the creation.

Answer 9

Thomas Edison created the light bulb and Albert Einstein had that theory about the speed of light but if your little sister means 'who invented the light that we see in the daytime' then it was invented by whoever created the Sun...God?...Mother Nature?

Answer 10

The light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison. Ben Franklin aided in discovering electricity.