I don’t quite understand how the photoelectric effect is evidence of light as particles.
Is it because when we increase the intensity of a light source with a frequency below the minimum frequency for the emission of electrons in a certain metal, we increase the amplitude of the light wave and according to wave theory this wave therefore contains more energy and so the electrons would still have to reject?
Answer
correct: the photoelectric effect is not proof if that light were made up of particles. All it shows is that the energy exchanged between charged particles (in most cases electrons, but also protons, ions, positrons, holes, and even molecules and macroscopic structures…) and an electromagnetic wave, happens in steps, called quantum or photon, these steps have a magnitude proportional to the frequency of the wave.
Nowhere does it say that the light itself must also consist of particles.
And for the skeptics, even the opposite can be argued: suppose light consists of point-like particles traveling at the speed of light, how could such a point be attributed a “frequency” or “wavelength”?
But that too is not demonstrated by the photoelectric effect….
Answered by
Engineer Bart Dierickx
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