OK so, I was doing a little thought experiment and I have a few questions. As I'm sure everyone here knows, when we see an object, we are actually seeing light reflected off the object. Also we know that angle of reflection = angle of refraction.
Here's the experiment, We have a light source that emits a powerful, but very narrow beam of light. If you're light source is hitting an object at an angle of 10 degrees, why can you see the object if you are 45 degrees from it?
I had a couple ideas of possibilities although they are probably wrong.
1. Since the particles in an object vibrate, it causes the photons to bounce every direction in 10 degrees. If so, theoretically if you could freeze an object to 0 degrees kelvin and were to try the same experiment, would the object only be visible at 10 degrees on the other side (or 170 degrees)?
2. Every object has crystalline properties to a certain extent and the light bounces around inside and comes back out in all directions.
Any thoughts?