system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When a photon reflects off of a mirror and changes direction, does it decelerate, stop, then accelerate like objects with mass do?
gpt
Photons never stop in the sense you're speaking of, so no. A precise view of what happens is rather difficult since we're dealing with a quantum particle; in a sense it interacts with the mirror and takes all possible paths settling on one upon measurement (all the paths add to the quantum amplitude). Some photons get absorbed by the mirror, giving it energy, others are reflected and so on.