3 ms·
It’s energy, but is it kinetic energy? The photon’s massless, but it has momentum… so it can transfer kinetic energy, but does it do so kinetically? More to th
by jameshart 3y ago
It’s energy, but is it kinetic energy? The photon’s massless, but it has momentum… so it can transfer kinetic energy, but does it do so kinetically?
More to the point, ‘kinetic energy’ is ‘movement energy’ - energy you possess by virtue of the fact you are moving.
Show me a stationary photon and we can talk about its ‘kinetic’ energy vs. some other kind of energy.
- _x9du 3y agoI don't understand that, given that momentum is mass times velocity. Can you explain?
- jameshart 3y agoFor a photon, momentum is (edit) the inverse of its wavelength, times the Planck constant. I appreciate that this is not really an ‘explanation’.
- mercutio2 3y agoNon-relativistic momentum is (simplified to) mass times velocity. Photons have zero mass, but still have momentum, p=h/λ.
- denton-scratch 3y agoMass == energy.