really easy chemistry question please answer.?

Question

What is meant by dual wave-particle nature of light?

Answer 1

Light (as all electro-magnetic radiation) is really not a particle or a wave in the strictest sense. If you set up the experiment one way, as in having two slits in an opaque piece of paper, you can see it behaving just like a wave. In other experiments you can see light behaving like a particle with it bouncing off things like a ball.

So depending on how you want to think about it, light is very much composed of particles (called photons) and can be moved around by gravity. Or it can be thought of as being a wave and it can be "tuned" to interact with matter. Which is it? Neither or both!

BTW, as another person mentioned the photo-electric effect, that really is closer to light being a wave. It happens only with innermost electrons and happens at very low energy gammas or higher energy UV. Why? Because the harmonics of the waves match. Yep, electrons can be thought of as existing in standing waves as well. Probably too much information. *grin*

Answer 2

It means that light has wave and particle properties. For some phenomena its particle nature dominates whereas some other light phenomena can be explained if we examine its other nature, which is the wave nature.
Generally, what is ment is that light sometimes behaves like a wave (frequency, etc.) and sometimes like a particle (like an atom)

Answer 3

the particle effect is noticed in effects such as the photoelectric effect (which is how solar panels work with zinc to convert light into electricity) and the wave part is noticed by how light bends under gravitation, and how it can interfere wih itself... They anymore put light in the group of photons (what Einstein called it) with is niether but has properties of both.

Answer 4

it moves like a wave,but it has particles!(fotons)