DiffusionElena MingoranceAward: Top 100
School: south side high school I took this photo of my mother walking through New York City at night in hopes of capturing the effects of the diffusion of light from the street lamp through the emission of steam. Diffusion creates an even distribution of light and is often used in photography to lessen sharp shadows and soften the background. Diffusion occurs when light interacts with a medium's molecular irregularities, causing the incident ray of light – the light traveling towards a surface – to scatter. Most street lamps use LED lighting systems which emit blue wavelengths, a color with a shorter wavelength on the visible spectrum compared to yellow light, used by traditional streetlights. Steam particles are able to better diffuse light at shorter wavelengths, allowing the steam to diffuse the light from the streetlight better than it would have a traditional street lamp. Rayleigh scattering is a phenomenon that diffuses light better at shorter wavelengths. For this phenomenon to occur, particles, in this case the fine water droplets of the steam, must be smaller than the wavelength of light they must scatter. Because scattering intensity is inversely proportional to the fourth power of wavelength, smaller wavelengths of light such as blue light are scattered more strongly in comparison to yellow light. 
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