Confused about photoelectric effect! [ENDORSED]

[304655635]

I am still kinda confused about the photoelectric effect, can someone explain it more in depth for me please? I would really appreciate it.

[Shanmitha Arun 1L]

When light shines on a metal, electrons can be emitted from the surface of the metal. This is what is known as the photoelectric effect. From experiments, we have learned that intensity of the light does not affect the energies of the emitted electrons.

[Shawn Patel 1I]

Hey,
Basically, the photoelectric effect states that electrons will be ejected from the surface of a metal when exposed to electromagnetic radiation. However, in order for an electron to be ejected, the radiation has to have a frequency above the threshold value for that particular metal. The photoelectric effect supports the idea that the electromagnetic radiation is made of particles called photons, and when the photons collide with the electrons in the metal, the electrons absorb the energy. If the energy is high enough, the electron will be ejected, otherwise, the electron will remain in place.

I hope this helps

[nanditasundarapandian1D]

Hi!

The photoelectric effect simply explains that light acts as a particle not as a wave. In a wave the higher the intensity the more energy was released. But this experiment instead showed that changing the intensity did not make a difference but instead the frequency had to be different. Light is made up of particles called photons. And each photon needed to be bigger than the threshold energy of the metal. The threshold energy is the energy needed to eject an electron. So by increasing the frequency each photon had more energy to be greater than or equal to the threshold energy.

[Andy Nguyen 1A]

So was the fact that light can act as a particle the unexpected effect or was it something else?

[Kennedy Moore 1D]

The "shocking" discovery they found was that no matter how much they changed/increased the intensity of the light, If the light didn't have strong enough protons (individually) to pull out the electrons (individually), the electron would not leave the metal.

[Alexia Joseph 2B]

It's important to understand that the photoelectric effect experiment shined light on a metal surface to try and measure the energy needed to remove electrons from different metals. This experiment was important because it had an unexpected outcome; the experiment showed that unless E(photon)is greater than/equal to the E(energy to remove e-), an electron is not emitted, even for high intensity light. It showed that light had to be thought of as photons (packets of energy), because light could not be explained as only having wave properties in this experiment. Each proton must have had a sufficient amount of energy to remove each electron attached to a photon model.