mo42

Here's something that's always bugged me. Whenever you have something like a mirror, or a shirt, or a solar cell, or whatever, and it's hit by light or other electromagnetic radiation, science has told us that the atoms absorb the light and electrons jump up an energy level and a photon gets released again when the electron jumps back down.

But how the heck does the atom pull this off? Does light hit the electron? Does it hit the nucleus? Does passing close by the atom cause the photon to be sucked in? What's the deal?

I would think the hitting the electron would be the most likely theory, but that just seems like it might be hard to do.

Anybody know how this works?

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