The word “quanta” in this context means discrete units of energy. It is a general term; in the case of electromagnetic energy a quantum is a photon.
Mindbogglingly, light behaves as both particles and waves, not neither. The best explanation I’ve seen for this so far is this video about quantum fields.
A photon is a quanta of light. Our picture of light, to this point, has been that of a wave. Wave-like characteristics are responsible for diffraction and refraction. However, light is absorbed and emitted one photon at a time.
I knew some new study would betrayal me, well I still wave my particle…
Quanta is just a word (related to quantity) as in: “smallest divisible quantity of”
So in the case of light we would be talking about photons, which are a quanta of light (e.g. discrete “packets” of light).
Light behaves as a wave, e.g. we can talk about the frequency of light. But it’s also pretty different from macroscopic waves e.g. it’s not accurate to think of them as what your see on a typical sinusoid graph, as at that level things don’t really have a fixed shape or position, we’re talking more about areas where they “probably” are (see: superposition, HUP etc)
It’s useful to think of light in terms of discrete photons for a number of reasons, e.g. in pair production, 1 gamma photon would be sufficient to create 1 electron/positron pair.
Photons also exhibit other particle-like behaviour despite having no rest mass. But the idea of rest mass becomes less significant at that level anyway as the line between energy and mass (e=mc²) gets blurred. And any sufficiently high energy object will likely exhibit some massive properties (hence why we tend to use MeV - a measure of energy - instead of a measure of mass, even when performing calculations with massive particles such as electrons.
Light is made of quanta. Neither waves nor particles.
The word “quanta” in this context means discrete units of energy. It is a general term; in the case of electromagnetic energy a quantum is a photon.
Mindbogglingly, light behaves as both particles and waves, not neither. The best explanation I’ve seen for this so far is this video about quantum fields.
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this video about quantum fields
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A photon is a quanta of light. Our picture of light, to this point, has been that of a wave. Wave-like characteristics are responsible for diffraction and refraction. However, light is absorbed and emitted one photon at a time.
I knew some new study would betrayal me, well I still wave my particle…
isnt a photon just a wave in the photon field or w\e?
If quantum field theory is correct, yes.
Or both
Quanta is just a word (related to quantity) as in: “smallest divisible quantity of”
So in the case of light we would be talking about photons, which are a quanta of light (e.g. discrete “packets” of light).
Light behaves as a wave, e.g. we can talk about the frequency of light. But it’s also pretty different from macroscopic waves e.g. it’s not accurate to think of them as what your see on a typical sinusoid graph, as at that level things don’t really have a fixed shape or position, we’re talking more about areas where they “probably” are (see: superposition, HUP etc)
It’s useful to think of light in terms of discrete photons for a number of reasons, e.g. in pair production, 1 gamma photon would be sufficient to create 1 electron/positron pair.
Photons also exhibit other particle-like behaviour despite having no rest mass. But the idea of rest mass becomes less significant at that level anyway as the line between energy and mass (e=mc²) gets blurred. And any sufficiently high energy object will likely exhibit some massive properties (hence why we tend to use MeV - a measure of energy - instead of a measure of mass, even when performing calculations with massive particles such as electrons.