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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. Einstein theorized that the energy in each quantum of light was equal to the frequency of light multiplied by a constant, later called the Planck constant .
In explaining the photoelectric effect, the hypothesis that energy consists of discrete packets, as Einstein illustrates, can be directly applied to black bodies, as well. The idea of light quanta contradicts the wave theory of light that follows naturally from James Clerk Maxwell 's equations for electromagnetic behavior and, more generally ...
The Planck relation [1] [2] [3] (referred to as Planck's energy–frequency relation, [4] the Planck–Einstein relation, [5] Planck equation, [6] and Planck formula, [7] though the latter might also refer to Planck's law [8] [9]) is a fundamental equation in quantum mechanics which states that the energy E of a photon, known as photon energy, is proportional to its frequency ν: =.
Building on Einstein's proposal that the photoelectric effect can be described using quantized energy transfers and by Einstein's separate proposal, from special relativity, that mass at rest is equivalent to energy via =, de Broglie proposed that matter in motion appears to have an associated wave with wavelength = / where is the matter ...
[3] [4] Einstein is best known by the general public for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc 2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"). [5] He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect ", a pivotal step in ...
In 1905, Albert Einstein adapted the Planck postulate to explain the photoelectric effect, but Einstein proposed that the energy of photons themselves was quantized (with photon energy given by the Planck–Einstein relation), and that quantization was not merely a feature of microscopic oscillators.
To explain the photoelectric effect, Einstein introduced the idea that light itself is made of discrete units of energy. In 1926, Gilbert N. Lewis popularized the term photon for these energy units. [3] [4] [5] Subsequently, many other experiments validated Einstein's approach. [6] [7] [8]
To explain the photoelectric effect, Albert Einstein assumed heuristically in 1905 that an electromagnetic field consists of particles of energy of amount hν, where h is the Planck constant and ν is the wave frequency.