Light's Behavior

[emaad_3H]

What does it mean when we say that light acts as a wave and as a particle?

[Kim Chen]

I believe in lecture, we learned that light generally shows diffraction patterns, which is something that particles will not do. However, light also behaves like a particle because a unit of light is a photon, and high-energy photons will act like particles. This was explained through the photoelectric effect -- experimentally, UV light hit a metal surface and emit electrons (which have particle properties).

[Althea Zhao 1B]

I found Dr. Lavelle's watering can analogy helpful for understanding this concept. In large quantities, water moves as a wave (continuously). However, we can also think of water jumping out of the (now shrunken to microscopic proportions) mouth of the water can in single molecules, or particles.

[Maya Gollamudi 1G]

At the larger scale, light appears to be continuous like a wave, but when light is observed as the microscopic scale, it is actually made up of a stream of discrete photons. Certain behaviors of light are characteristic of waves (diffraction patterns) and other behaviors are characteristic of particles (the photoelectric effect).