What a charmed strange life they lead...
You could think of it as holding something under a stream of running water, and how the water sprays off tells you something about what you held under it. Think a big jagged rock as compared to a small round ball. Or x-rays, which are the pattern of what bounces off an unknown object.
ETA: I just thought of the most obvious comparison: the sun as beam source, photons as neutrinos, your eyes as the detectors. You can tell a lot about the things the beam of photons hits by how they come back to your eyes.
Last edited by Tallulah; 12/04/10 12:50 PM.
