Light, Photon Energies and Atomic Spectra (II)
The particle nature of light is expressed in the idea that light comes in little packets, photons, which appear and disappear when interacting with matter.
The energy of a photon of light (a piece of light) is given by E=h? where h is Planck’s constant, 6.626x10-34 Joule-seconds (MKS units). This is a very small number!
Einstein’s 1905 explanation of the photoelectric effect (for which he won the Nobel Prize) was the proof that light came in packets (photons) of energy h? .