All About Light

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

The latest addition to SEED‘s excellent Cribsheet series: Light. On one page, everything you wanted to know or remember about the electromagnetic spectrum, wave-particle duality, how light interacts with matter, how we use light to study the size, age, and composition of the universe, how light can help provide clean energy, faster computers, and efficient space travel. Check out other Cribsheets on everything from hybrid cars to nuclear power to extinction to genetics, to name a few.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.