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Talking about electromagnetic radiation and its constant speed in class
(college physical science), and a student asks, "Does light accelerate
[using the term in the sense of increasing speed, NOT GR reference frames
around massive objects] to that speed?"
I'm okay with thinking about changes in an EM field propagating without
increasing speed from 0 to c, and I can handle a wave being created
instantaneously with a certain speed, because a wave is a propagation of
change, but how do we handle talking about photons appearing
instantaneously with speed c? Is it because a photon is merely a local
manifestation of the field? Are there photons in a non-zero but static
field?
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