Larry schott, age l2, of Louisville, Ky., for his question:

Is light made of molecules?

The world of nature basically is two sided. The two ingredients of its multitudinous aspects and items are matter and energy, Molecules are packages of gaseous, liquid or solid matter. Light and sound, heat and radio are forms of energy.

Light is said to be a phenomenon and the word phenomenon is coined from an older word meaning to appear or to show. For centuries the best brains have been mystified by the baffling behavior of light and though modern science can describe the astounding phenomenon it cannot explain it. Our modern conclusions resulted from spirited high level controversies that went on for more than 300 years.

The scientific investigation of light was started around l660 by Isaac Newton. He used a glass prism to separate the spectrum colors of a colorless sunbeam and theorized that light is made of particles traveling at staggering speeds. Newton named his light particles corpuscles and a few years after he suggested this corpuscular theory a scientist in Holland stoutly contradicted it.

Christian Huyghens suggested that light is a wave phenomenon.  suggest motion and motion is energy. Corpuscles suggest particles of matter such. as molecules. The phenomenon of light cannot be both energy and matter, but some of its behavior can be explained as wave motion and some as speeding, bouncing particles. Through the years new ideas were argued to advance first the wave theory, then the corpuscular theory.

In the l860s .James C. Maxwell figured out the relationships of the wave lengths of electromagnetic energy. White light took its place with radio and X ray, ultraviolet and Infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. For a time it seemed that the wave theory had won and light must be the motion of wave lengths.

Then came an astounding investigation into the relationship of energy and matter, and this thinking led finally to the theory of relativity. One of its aspects is the quantum theory that suggests that light is indeed composed of small packages. However, these photons or quanta are packages of energy and not particles of matter. No atoms or molecules of matter are involved  for light is a form of energy.

The long controversy between the wave theory and the corpuscular theory of light was not wasted. It led step by step to the truth. And, strange to say, both theories found a place in the final picture. Light is a wave motion. It also moves in independent packages, though these units are quanta of energy rather than particles of matter such as atoms and molecules.