Dates: June 17-20, 2024

What is light? Although it is all around us, light’s true nature remained hidden from scientists for thousands of years. Since ancient times, many theories were developed and then challenged, modified, or abandoned, until Einstein proposed the currently accepted quantum model. But how did these scientists come up with their theories? And how did they decide which ones were better and which should be discarded? 

This workshop is an interactive, hands-on journey through humanity’s epic quest to uncover the secrets of light. On the first and second day, we will reconstruct the key observations and experiments from ancient times onward that led to the Classical Theory of Light developed by Maxwell. On the third day, we will recreate the experiments that forced scientists to discard classical theory. Our journey will culminate on the 4th day as we discover how the same experiments were explained by the quantum theory that we still use today. By the end, you will not only be able to answer the question of "what is light?" but also the more fundamental question of, "How do we know what we know?"

Katerina Visnjic, Physics, Princeton University