Making Big Waves

I don’t know about other people in the class, but polarization pretty much fascinates me. For some strange reason I find the fact that waves of light oscillate in certain directions to be quite interesting. Perhaps the more interesting part to me is that the light can be filtered out through lenses that are formed to filter polarized light. What interests me most about this is that when turned at different angles the filter either allows more waves to pass or prevents the passing. When looked at from the perspective of someone who does not know much about polarization, one would expect that regardless of the direction the glass is facing it would filter the same amount of light. However, the truth is that the direction or angle the lens is facing will determine the amount of light that is filtered out if the wave oscillations occur in a polarized manner. What is most interesting about this, though, is that the waves generally remain at the same direction of oscillation as they travel. It seems quite likely to me that as the light travels various atmospheric effects would completely alter the oscillation of the wave so that it would not continue to display polarized effects. The reason this probably is important to me is that it is a clear example of a particle or wave effect visible in everyday life. By looking through filtered lenses we are able to visually see the polarized waves being filtered. Other topics that are often discussed in a physics class cannot be directly seen or observed. Granted there are many other phenomena that can be observed and described through their wave or particle function, but polarization is just something that is exciting to me.
During today’s class another revelation came to me as I realized that if light functions as a particle, the photon, the nature of its movements must be very different from the nature of the wave. As a photon, light is not merely fluctuations in energy or movement in particles but a particle itself. This means that light would have to behave in a similar fashion to all other particles that exist. This begs the question of how light is able to travel through transparent and translucent solids. If it is truly a particle, would not the glass of a window or the plastic of Tupperware stop the transmittance of light? The particle would, theoretically, be stopped as soon as it hit the glass or the plastic and would therefore not be able to be seen, as it currently is. This would have even far more implications. I do not believe that sight would be possible if the photon behaved in a matter similar to this. No light photons would be able to pass through the eye and reach the retina. Thus, no image could be carried along the optic nerves to finally reach the brain, which interprets the signal. Light could therefore not function in this manner. The particle must be different from the way that I have described. It would make more sense for it to be a wave, being that a wave could solve all the issues that I have presented, but I have been taught that light is both a wave and has a particle function.
A different physical property that I have been pondering is that of wave interaction. I have been told that wave do not interfere with each other, except sometimes when they pass over each other, as seen when two waves cancel each other out or add together to create an even larger crest. However, despite this, one important basic function eludes me. How is it possible that after either canceling each other out or adding together the waves separate and continue along their intended paths?
Would it not make sense that they would totally alter the original path of the wave? The waves may have momentum that keeps them going in a constant direction, but why does the momentum continue after the waves have collided? If the waves separate, wouldn’t the momentum be different because the waves have affected each other? If we then examine the momentum of the wave through continuous subdivisions, we soon approach a similar obstacle as faced by Zeno. However, Zeno’s paradoxes were solved through other means, so perhaps this question is answered through other means.
All the questions I have pondered in this blog entry are possibly already answered. Unfortunately, I do not have a great physics background, so the answers could all be out there and I just don’t know them. In my constant search for knowledge I will hopefully someday discover the truth.