# How can light be both a wave and a particle?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-light-be-both-a-wave-and-a-particle/251287>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [June 20, 2004, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-light-be-both-a-wave-and-a-particle/251287 "2004-06-20T07:11:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-light-be-both-a-wave-and-a-particle/251287/121 "2004-11-29T13:48:44Z")

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> [@tim314](#):
>
> No, photons really move. In fact, they move at the speed of light.
> 
> There’s not an “undiscovered medium” at work here. Light is well understood. It’s not a wave of matter, so it doesn’t require a matterial medium. It’s a wave of electric and magnetic fields.

More to the point photons _propagate_. The inaccuracy (maybe photons don’t move the same way water molecules at sea don’t move with the wave) is in thinking that the photons constitute the medium for a light wave. Photons _are_ the waves, and to the extent that they’re localizable they “move”. Better to say they propagate, which applies to both localized and smeared-out waves.

Then again, I’m still coming at this from my aforementioned perspective that QFT makes visualization a lot easier.

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