Introduction to optical mineralogy / Введение в оптическую минералогию

In some ways light is an enigma. We know that it is a form of energy that is transmitted from one place to another at finite velocity and that it can be detected with the eye. In many ways it behaves as though it were composed of numerous tiny particles that travel bullet-like from one point to another. But it also behaves as though it were a wave phenomena in which the energy moves somewhat like the waves started by dropping a pebble in a pond. Because light behaves in these two seemingly contradictory ways, two different theories, the particle theory and the wave theory, have been developed to explain it. <...>