Understanding The ever elusive Photon Model

Hernik

Hi! Maybe I can help. As a layman I have been asking directions for the waterfront for some years now, and I'm still wandering about asking anybody I think can help :-)

Your problem is, that you want to explain what a photon IS. Physics describes accurately (very impressing I think) how it acts, how it behaves. But it is not absolutely clear what light IS.

Apart maybe from the fact that it is an amount of energy that leaves one entity and arrives at another entity at the speed of light. An "entity" being an antenna, an atom, a molecule, the annihilation of an electron and a positron.. and many other possibilities, I'm sure.

You read things about light like "It's a particle" or "It behaves like a wave". But it cannot be waves.

If it was a wave emitted from a point it would spread evenly in three dimensions. Like the rings on the surface of water in two dimensions. But clearly light is not like that. It has direction. And it arrives at a single point. No wave in the ocean lands on a single grain of sand on the beach.

Neither can it be particles. If light was particles how could a single photon ever go through two slits at the same time?

Sometimes measurements show light has wave-LIKE properties. Sometimes experiments document light has particle-LIKE properties.

So physicist have a fine collection of descriptions of light and how it interacts with matter which each work in different situations. Just not one description which fits all situations.

They don't know where that waterfront is themselves ;-)

Hope this helps, (and hope it is correct!)

Best regards, Henrik