Question
Question: Is a Photon a Particle or a Wave?...
Is a Photon a Particle or a Wave?
Solution
A sort of elementary particle is the photon. It is the force carrier for the electromagnetic force and the quantum of the electromagnetic field, which includes electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves. Because photons have no mass, they always travel at the speed of light in vacuum, which is 299792458 m/s. The photon belongs to the boson family of particles.
Complete step-by-step solution:
A particle (or corpuscule in earlier literature) is a small localised entity to which many physical or chemical attributes such as volume, density, or mass can be assigned. From subatomic particles like the electron to tiny particles like atoms and molecules to macroscopic particles like powders and other granular materials, they vary significantly in size and number. Particles can also be utilised to build scientific models of even larger things, such as individuals moving in a crowd or heavenly bodies in motion, depending on their density.
A wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance of one or more quantities in physics, mathematics, and related areas, frequently represented by a wave equation. At least two field quantities in the wave medium are involved in physical waves. Periodic waves occur when variables oscillate periodically around an equilibrium (resting) value at a specific frequency. A travelling wave occurs when the entire waveform moves in one direction; a standing wave occurs when two superimposed periodic waves move in opposite directions. The amplitude of vibration in a standing wave features nulls at some points when the wave amplitude looks lower or even zero.
Both photons travel at the speed of light. Photons are field particles that are supposed to be electromagnetic field carriers, with no electric charge or rest mass and one unit of spin, as defined by the subatomic particles. The energy of an electron is held at a location, exactly as the energy of a molecule. Like a result, as the electron travels across space as a wave, it interacts like a particle at a single location. The phenomenon is known as wave-particle duality. Although light generally acts as a wave, it is also known to be made up of small energy packets known as photons. Photons carry a constant quantity of energy yet have no mass. They also discovered that raising the intensity of light enhanced the quantity of electrons expelled but not their speed.
Note: In quantum physics, wave–particle duality states that each particle or quantum phenomenon may be represented as either a particle or a wave. It illustrates the inadequacy of classical terms like "particle" and "wave" to adequately characterise quantum-scale things' behaviour. As Albert Einstein put it, "it appears as though we must employ one theory occasionally and the other theory at other times, but at other times we may use either." We are confronted with a new type of challenge. We have two contradicting visions of reality; neither of them adequately explains the phenomenon of light when seen alone, but when viewed together, they do.