Concept: Engergy & momentum of light? Uncertainty Principle?

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Physics

Concept:
Engergy & momentum of light?
Uncertainty Principle?

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3.6 Ratings (353 Votes)

Light as a Particle Light is a wave but thats not all it is Light acting like a wave was relatively easy to produce Even in the middle of the 19th century we knew that light could reflect refract and diffract And as far as we could tell those effects could only be explained by light being a wave But then Albert Einstein noticed something He showed in his photoelectric effect experiment that light could also behave as a particle In that experiment he shone light onto some metal and found that electrons were ejected When the light was brighter more electrons were ejected but those electrons didnt move any faster they didnt have any extra energy However if he increased the energy of the light making the light bluer the electrons did move faster Suffice it to say this was not what he expected and these observations led him to the realization that light must behave both as a wave and a particle this is called waveparticle duality Energy of a Photon It turns out that light contains energy in discrete packets or particles called photons The amount of energy in those photons is calculated See Answer

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