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Hi. My name is Clayton Turner. I'm a research engineer here at NASA Langley Research Center.

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Hi. I'm Kaylee. I'm Catherine. Nice to meet you.

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We're trying to solve a problem, and we need to know how light can travel in a wave and a straight line at the very same time.

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Perhaps I can help. I do a lot of research with light on this laboratory.

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That doesn't look like a laboratory. That looks like a plane.

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Well, this is NASA Langley's 757 Ares Research Aircraft. Come on board.

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Do you fly this plane?

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No, I don't fly the plane. We use this plane to conduct research. In particular, we use light to study the atmosphere.

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What's that?

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This is a spectrometer. Let's go in the back, and I'll tell you a little bit more about it.

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This is a spectrometer. It collects light and sorts it by wavelength.

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Can you tell us more about light as a wave and a straight line?

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Yes. Light can be thought of as particles called photons that travel in a wave-like pattern.

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But we also learned that light can travel in a ray, which is a straight line.

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Yes. A simple model of light is called a ray or a straight line.

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The arrow at the end of the line shows the direction that the photon is traveling in.

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But what about a wave?

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Light, or electromagnetic radiation, is a form of energy called gradient energy that has an electric field and a magnetic field.

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If you take the simple model shown on the screen and add an electric field, it would look like this.

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That looks funny.

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Look at the ends of the electric field.

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It looks kind of like a wave. But why are the lines different heights?

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First, let's look at a model of the wave.

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He knows magic, too.

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The top of the wave is called a crest. The bottom of the wave is called a trough.

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The wavelength is measured from the top of one crest to the top of the next crest.

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Do different wavelengths mean different things?

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Yes. Color is typically described by the wavelength of frequency.

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For visible light, violet has the shortest wavelength, and red has the longest.

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So what is frequency?

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Frequency is the number of times the crest of the wave passes a stationary point.

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I get it. So the shorter the wavelength, the more waves would pass a stationary point, and that would be high frequency.

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So violet is high frequency, and red is low frequency.

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Is there anything else we should know about a wave?

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Yes. Amplitude.

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Why is this important?

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The amplitude is half the distance from the crest to the trough.

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The higher the amplitude and frequency, the higher the energy.

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Thanks for letting us go on the 757. We learned a lot.

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I really hope this information helps you solve the problem.