I was wondering...

I only know a little about what we can do with light.

Of course it has it's life producing energy, but I'm speaking of things like reflecting, burning, measuring, etc.

My questions is, is there a substance that would resist light rather than absorb or reflect it ? For example, if I coated a scale with it could I measure weight ? Light bounces off easily. Is it impossible to have it bump into something and push it ???

Has anyone ever tried this ?

I will investigate this further.....

Does light have mass?

No, at least not in the usual sense. The particles that light is made of (the photons) do not have rest mass, which means that you cannot `stop' a photon to put it on a scale --- it must travel at the speed of light!. As you might know, Special Relativity predicts that a body having rest mass cannot be accelerated to a velocity equal to or greater than that of light. So one could also see it the other way round: Photons travel at the speed of light, so they cannot have rest mass.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that you can't attribute a mass to a photon with a certain frequency. According to Einstein's famous E=mc2, a photon with frequency f has a mass of hf/c2, where h is Planck's constant. But this mass is only a number which is related to the photon's energy content and has nothing to do with the concept of rest mass.

[MadSci.net]

Just type your topic question on any search engine online, and you will get similar answer from physicists.

Wow

I thank you for both

I just thought that if it could be done...the benefits would be so great.

Yet, if as believed, that light can be bent by gravity it must have some sort of mass.

Originally posted by Dan Fussell
Yet, if as believed, that light can be bent by gravity it must have some sort of mass.

Gravity is cosmic topography. It is like a mountain range or a gorge in space. Light can travel along the contours of "gravity" and still have no mass.

yes light has mass...if you shine a very fine beam of light by the sun it will bend just slightly.

its cool to think that it is imposible to see anythign where it is because the light that you used to see it also moved it a bit

also if you could make something that would absorb all teh light that hit it, it would become invisible...very cool.

its also cool that light has mass and yet it also is a wave.

but this i only know from talking to my dad, who was really obsesed with science and the such when he was in collage. its cool