The need and desire to understand just what light really is and how it works has been the motivation behind questions and research that have been going on for many centuries now. It wasn't until the late seventeenth century, however, that these questions and the research work they fuelled started to yield results. They brought to the forefront theories and experiments that have since come to form the foundation of our current understanding regarding the nature and workings of light.

In 1690, Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens put forward the proposal that light was made up of undulating waves that stimulated vision upon reaching the eye. His idea was that light behaved in pretty much the same manner as sound waves, which stimulate hearing upon reaching the ear.

English physicist Sir Isaac Newton, however, had been applying his own thinking to the questions surrounding the workings of light and didn't agree with Huygens. So, Newton proposed a different theory...