Open main menu SearchEditWatch this pageRead in another languagePhotoelectric effectThe photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons or other free carriers when lightshines on a material. Electrons emitted in this manner can be called photo electrons. This phenomenon is commonly studied in electronic physics, as well as in fields of chemistry, such as quantum chemistry or electrochemistry. According to classical electromagnetic theory, this effect can be attributed to the transfer of energy from the light to an electron. From this perspective, an alteration in the intensity of light would induce changes in the kinetic energy of the electrons emitted from the metal. Furthermore, according to this theory, a sufficiently dim light would be expected to show a time lag between the initial shining of its light and the subsequent emission of an electron. However, the experimental results did not correlate with either of the two predictions made by classical theory. Instead, electrons are dislodged only by the impingement of photons when those photons reach or exceed a threshold frequency(energy). Below that threshold, no electrons are emitted from the material regardless of the light intensity or the length of time of exposure to the light (rarely, an electron will escape by absorbing two or more quanta. However, this is extremely rare because by the time it absorbs enough quanta to escape, the electron will probably have emitted the rest of the quanta.). To make sense of the fact that light can eject electrons even if its intensity is low, Albert Einstein proposed that a beam of light is not a wave propagating through space, but rather a collection of discrete wave packets (photons), each with energy hν. This shed light on Max Planck's previous discovery of the Planck relation (E = hν) linking energy (E) and frequency (ν) as arising from quantization of energy. The factor h is known as the Planck constant.[1][2] In 1887, Heinrich Hertz[2][3] discovered that electrodes illuminated with ultraviolet light create electric sparks more easily. In 1900, while studying black-body radiation, the German physicist Max Planck suggested that the energy carried by electromagnetic waves could only be released in "packets" of energy. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper advancing the hypothesis that light energy is carried in discrete quantized packets to explain experimental data from the photoelectric effect. This model contributed to the development of quantum mechanics. In 1914, Robert Millikan's experiment supported Einstein's model of the photoelectric effect. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for "his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect",[4] and Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 for "his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect".[5] |
