Examples of waves and particles of light

[Samantha Lee 1A]

Can someone please give some examples of when light acts like a wave v. when light acts like a particle (some examples we may see on an exam). Thank you

[Marisa Gaitan 2D]

I think the most important thing to know is that light is acting like a particle or a "stream of photons" in the photoelectric effect and is acting like a wave in diffraction. As long as we have a strong understanding of the behavior of light in those scenarios, I'm thinking we'll be okay for the exams. If they give us another example on a test, I'm sure we could apply what we know from these two experiments to identify the behavior.

[VincentLe_3A]

To add on, it is just conceptually important to distinguish the difference between the classical mechanics model and quantum mechanics model of light. In the classic mechanics model, light acts as a wave whereas in the quantum mechanics model, light is absorbed and emitted in discrete units (photons). As stated earlier, I think it is sufficient to know and understand the key piece of evidence for each model, which are light diffraction (suggests light is a wave) and the photoelectric effect experiment (suggests light is a photon).