I Can electrons absorb a photon?

Electrons don't reflect photons, they absorb them, go to a higher energy state, and then re-emit a new photon when they drop back to the original energy state.

If you had simply typed the question in the subject line into a Google search you would have had your answer.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/little-excuse-ask-question-cold/

 

Electrons, per se, do not absorb (or emit) photons either. From Wiki: "An isolated electron at a constant velocity cannot emit or absorb a real photon; doing so would violate conservation of energy and momentum."

They can only absorb a photon in context. For instance, an electron in an orbital in an atom can absorb a photon and move to a higher energy orbital. Now was it the electron that absorbed the photon or the atom that did so?

 

What makes you think that they can?

Edit: there is some dissonance here. A "beam of light" and a "photon" are not the same thing.

 

I don't feel that the OP's question could have been answered with a simple google search. I say this because I was going to post an answer earlier today and then realized that even I didn't know how reflection behaved when it came to single particles. So I searched google. The first few pages turned up little to help me. I then typed up an entire post to answer one of the OP's latter questions before I read some of the responses here and realized I still didn't know what I was talking about.

 

Yes, but that's normal for you (thanks for the setup ) but I did think that the first Google hit I got pretty well answered the question

 

I haven't watched the video (probably won't), but I'd suggest you look into Compton scattering if you haven't heard it. Here is a link: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/comptint.html

 

It's not so much a simple "thank you", that we are after. It is feedback that shows that you are paying attention and taking our responses on board. And feedback that gives us a clue about where our responses are hitting or missing the mark.

 

OK so as I said in response to you in your other thread

how about starting again
state your age and education … that gives us an idea to what depth of discussion people can respond
that you are able to understand

Clearly state what you do know and understand ( within the realms of todays known physics)
about this particular topic

 

My like of your post was for those two comments, thankyou for that

Pretty much everything in between those comments, and as Dale commented on, is unfortunately incorrect

But there is hope stick around and be prepared to learn some good stuff.
There are some incredibly knowledgeable people on this site ( much better than me) and they will be happy to lead you in the right direction
I know I have learnt a heck of a lit in the last 7 or 8 years that I have been here … particle physics isn't my forte …
I'm into geology, Astronomy and electronics


Dave

 

That is not an adequate reference. Give us a URL at least. As @Dale points out, the understanding you took away from that page is incorrect.

A more standard characterization is that an elementary particle has no underlying structure. It is not constructed from other pieces. "Form" and "shape" are not meaningful attributes for an elementary particle.

Again, an actual reference would be helpful. What I see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon is that the word "size" is not used anywhere.

 

By specifying "visible light" in the original post, the statement is probably referring to the wave length being too long to "image" a molecule. The wavelength of visible light runs (roughly) from 380nm to 750 nm (3800 to 7500 Angstroms), which is much greater than the dimension of a molecule (a few dozen Angstroms). So the wavelength of visible light is much too long to resolve a molecule. That is different from the absorbtion issue.