Using light, we can achieve more than simply see the world around us. Spectroscopy can be used to find chemical composition of a sample, frequency of light interacting with atoms can be used to measure time. We can even move objects by shining light at them. Such manipulations are far from tractor beams of science fiction, but optical tweezers are commonly used to manipulate small objects in many labs around the world. And there are other ways how to control matter using light.
Ondřej Černotík 