Question

Why does light bend around the very small corners and not around the usual size ones?

Answer 1

However, the waves which make up sound are quite long - each wave is a foot long, about the same length as waves you might see in the water at the beach (the length of a wave is called itswavelength). On the other hand, the waves which make up the light we see are much, much smaller - about a million times smaller. They are about as small as the smallest thing you can see under a very good microscope. Now it happens that one of the things about waves is the following:if they encounter an obstacle which is smaller than their wavelength, the wave just kind of wraps around the object and keeps on going.This is why you can hide behind a big tree trunk and the voices of people on the other side of the tree will still reach you (because the long waves of the sound wrap around the tree), but light from their flash light won't (because the short waves of the light can't wrap around such a big object). Sound and light act similarly when they reach a corner of a house - the sound waves are long and kind of wrap around the corner and then spread out from there, where as the very short light waves can't bend around the corner. As you might have guessed already, this means thatlight does wrap around very small things (things smaller than a millionth of a foot), and does bend a tiny tiny bit around corners, but mostly this is so small it is impossible to see with your eye.