"In particular, black body radiation, photoluminescence, generation of cathode rays from ultraviolet light and other phenomena associated with the generation and transformation of light seem better modeled by assuming that the energy of light is distributed discontinuously in space. According to this picture, the energy of a light wave emitted from a point source is not spread continuously over ever larger volumes, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta that are spatially localized at points of space, move without dividing and are absorbed or generated only as a whole."
https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/le...05_docs/Einstein_Light_Quantum_WikiSource.pdf
Ray McDavis said:
Waves are energy moving. Light is moving packets of fixed amounts of energy. Why must we invoke particles to understand light? How is a wave (energy moving) antithetical to packets of energy?
You must invoke paticles to understand the different energy properties of light, because light is not packets of fixed energy. Photons are a fixed delta in space or time, "C". Like L*W*H determines volume, not density. The Frequency of the EMF determines their individual energy, not total light energy. Our eyes detects different frequencies as different colors. The brightness of a single color can vary. This is not because the energy of each individual packet varies, but the amount of packets entering our eyes does. Of course the EM spectrum extends out much further on both ends than what our eyes can perceive.
If you want to think of it as a fixed energy point of view, then you would have to think you could emit more red photons than violet photons, if you had sufficent energy to make them. You would possibly also have a remainder lower frequency EMF from the energy left over, unable to make a light photon.
Imagine seeing two ocean waves the same height hit a break wall, but one gets reflected by the break wall, and the other pushes the wall and everything behind it inland 100ft. It would be a strange sight, but that's what light waves are like. Not exactly like other observable waves in how they carry energy. Based on observed water level, one wave you would say that behaved wave like, and the other, you would say it behaved particle like.