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The salient point here about the photoelectric effect is not a pre-existing mental image of bouncing balls, but being forced to explain the fact that decreasing
by platz 10y ago
The salient point here about the photoelectric effect is not a pre-existing mental image of bouncing balls, but being forced to explain the fact that decreasing the intensity (amount of light) of monochromatic light doesn't produce electrons with lower energy (only changing the light's color/wavelength does that). This cannot be explained with classical waves; less light waves would produce lower-energy electrons.
now we can start talking about wave-packets, but then we staring to blur the lines between what is the difference between a particle and a wave-packet.
- scotty79 10y agoYup, neither particles nor waves fit the quantum world completely, but people chose to think about all this as strangely behaving particles, not strangely behaving waves which would be much easier because there would be no need for collapse of probability distribution to a particle and concept of same particle being in multiple places as waves could be naturally more blurred or more sharp. Ultimately it doesn't matter because math is the same.