Einstein did not try to reconcile the wave and particle theories of ligbt and di

Question

Einstein did not try to reconcile the wave and particle theories of ligbt and did not say much about their apparent inconsistency. Einstein basically visualized a beam of light as a stream of bullets coming from a machine gun. In the photoelectric effect a photon "bullet"would only hit one atom. Just as a real bullet wuld only just one person. Suppose someone reading his 1905 paper wanted to interpret it by saying that Einstein's so-called particles of light are simply short wave-length that only occupy a small region of space. Comparing the wavelength of visible lisht(a few hundred nm)to the size of an atom(on the order of 0. I nm), explain why this poses a difficulty for reconciling the particle and wave theories.

Explanation / Answer

The acceptance of light as composed of particles (or photons) led to another shocking realization. For example, if light shines on an imperfectly transparent sheet of glass, it may happen that 95% of thelight transmits through the glass while 5% is reflected back. This makes perfect sense if light is a wave (the wave simply splits and a smaller wave is reflected back). But if light is considered as a stream of identical particles, then all we can say is that each and every photonarriving at the glass has a 95% chance of being transmitted and a 5% chance of being reflected.

The actual behaviour of any individual photon is therefore totally random and unpredictable, not just in practice but even in principle. Although the tossing of a coin, for example, is random in practice, if we knew precisely everything about the force, angle, shape, air currents, etc, we could, in principle, predict the outcome accurately. The behaviour of a sub-atomic particle, however, is random on a whole different level, and can never be predicted.

Thus, it is not possible to predict a single definite result for an obervation, only a number of different possible outcomes, each with a particular likelihood or probability. Physics had therefore changed overnight from a study of absolute certainty, to one of merely predicting the odds!

The reason we do not see the effects of this on a more macro scale is that everyday objects are composed of billions or trillions of sub-atomic particles. Although the position of each individual particle may be highly uncertain, because there are so many of them acting in unison in an everyday object, the combined probabilities add up to what is, to all intents and purposes, a certainty.

In order to reconcile the wave-like and particle-like behaviour of light, its wave-like aspect needs to be able to

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