About photons.... [ENDORSED]

[Marie_Bae_3M]

Can increasing the amount of photons emit an electron or must the photons themselves need more energy to eject an electron? Thank you :)

[Chem_Mod]

Each individual photon must have sufficient energy to remove an electron in the photoelectric experiment.

[Jeannie_Kim_1I]

Dr. Lavelle mentioned that light is made of photon energy, meaning photons consist of energy. The amount of energy a photon has is determined by frequency. The higher the frequency, the higher the energy. Each photon need to have enough energy to interact with one metal atom to eject one electron. Hope this helps!

[YuniLee_1K]

The photoelectric effect experiment actually discovered this as a way to disprove the accuracy of the quantum mechanics description of light! Increasing the intensity of the light (or increasing the number of photons) did not result in a higher amount of electrons removed from the metal surface. Since light acts like photons rather than with just wave properties, shorter wavelength light increased the energy of EACH photon to break the threshold energy. In short, the photons need to have sufficient energy to overcome the threshold energy to eject more electrons.