To Save Drowning People, Ask Yourself “What Would Light Do?” - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/-to-save-drowning-people-ask-yourself-what-would-light-do
Imagine you’re a lifeguard and you see someone struggling to stay afloat. Being a responsible lifeguard, you want to get to them as quickly as possible. You’re pretty fast when swimming, but even faster running on sand. So what’s the quickest route to get to the swimmer? It may not sound like it, but this puzzle, which was laid out by famed physicist Richard Feynman, is actually an analogy for the behavior of light. Although I first read it over 10 years ago, its lesson about how light travels has stuck with me.Aatish BhatiaAt first thought you might consider whether a straight line (path A) is the fastest path. This is indeed the shortest one, but it isn’t the quickest. You can do better, because if you run further along the beach, you’ll cover more distance on land than in water. And (...)