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?