🚀 go-pugleaf

Martin Green wrote: 
  
> There is NO honest way of helping high school students understand the
> dual nature of light, because all the "ordinary" quantum effects can
> be explained by the quantum properties of matter. By "ordinary" I mean
> the famous results (black body radiation, photo-electric effect,
> ticking of geiger counter) that are normally used to justify
> "photons". In fact, all these effects can be explained by ordinary
> electromagnetic light interacting with quantized atomic states. 

   Except that it happens that in all of these interactions with
quantized atomic states, light is only absorbed or produced in "packets"
with discrete amounts of energy, and the minimum energy steps are the
same regardless of the process producing or absorbing the light.  This
strongly suggests that light is in fact quantized.  If light were not
quantized, it would be rather strange that it is only produced and
absorbed in discrete amounts.  You're right that this isn't a "proof",
but it is something that can help high school students understand the
quantum nature of light.

-- 
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                                  |  Department of Physics and Astronomy
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