What kind of substance is the so called Photon?

Question

What substance is pure energy?
and what is umpure energy?

can photon be split just like the atom?

They say that energy and matter convert back and forth. can any of them ever make up their mind?

my cat would not convert into a dog=his is too smart for that.

Energy is schistophrenic that it can be a particle and a wave at the same time?

Answer 1

Photon is not a substance. It is pure energy.

Light travels in discrete quantities called photons. It is only called a particle due to the wave-particle duality. That is, all energy and matter come in discrete amount, and travel in a wave (wave movement is not noticeable in matter because the wavelengths are extremely long)

Answer 2

A photon is energy....a very specific amount of energy depending on the wavelength (or frequency) of the light.

The energy contained in a photon of light is given as,
E = h * ( c / lambda)
where E is energy, h is Plank's constant (h = 6.63 x10-34 J s / photon), c is the speed of light in a vacuum (c = 299,792,458 m/s ), and lambda [the Greek letter] is the wavelength of the light.

A photon has no rest mass and is thus not made up of any ordinary matter as an atom might be made of.
A photon is energy, and thus to "split" a photon would mean to take that energy and divide it up into two or more photons will the sum of their energies equalling the energy of the first photon.
These new photons would each have less energy than the original and thus (from the above formula), would have a lower frequency (longer wavelength).

I am not aware if there is any way to split a photon without first loosing the original in the process.
What I mean by that is...using the analogy of the atom...if you split an atom, all you have to do it shoot a high energy particle at it (a neutron for example) and you get two halves from the original whole. With a photon, it is not so easy...it would probably have to interact with something first....like being absorbed by an electron, and then re-emitted as the electron quantum leaps back to the ground state through multiple paths, thus emitting multiple photons.


EDIT:
Energy in general is not schizophrenic, just light. You wont see Kinetic energy all of a sudden turning into a wave or photons, just electromagnetic radiation. You can have photons of light even beyond the visible EM spectrum.

Answer 3

It is a quantum of electromagnetic energy. When electromagnetic energy (such as light) interacts with matter, it does so as discrete packets of energy, which are called photons. Photons have no rest mass, and have energy proportional to their frequencies.

If by substance you mean matter, there is none, it's just energy. If you want to know what that's made of, physics has no answer, although string theory might give some additional insight into the nature of photons. In general, quantum physics does not attempt to describe the essence of things, but merely to describe their behavior.

Answer 4

Boy, you are into substances aren't you?

Photon is a theoretical description of light that we see. The word means "particle of light". Why physicist think that light may be a particle rather than a wave? Because some guy discovered that the energy of light is quantized or that it comes in packets. We see this in our light sensitive nightlights. If it is bright enough, the nightlight turns off. If it isn't, the nightlight turns on. Quantized. This lead physicist to think light is a particle, hence the name photon.

Answer 5

That is a very large question as photons are very odd little creatures. Best to probably think of a photon as a small packet of energy that exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties.

Answer 6

I am not sure about a substance. However all I know is that Photon is partially wave and partially concentrated electromagnetic energy.

Answer 7

Standard Model physics does not agree with me but I must tell you that they are converted electrons that still retain their mass and other basic construction. It is their overall switch from a rotational and stationary object (rotating at c) to a criss-crossing set of strings propagating at c in a linear fashion. That is why physicists believe that energy and matter convert back and forth so easily.