Photon energy

@Krokc,

Krokc wrote:

I saw that photon is a energy carrier and my friend says photon is a light energy carrier. My question is how can we specify that photon is always light energy?

What do you mean by "light energy"? Are radio waves and gamma rays "light"?

1 Reply

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

Krokc wrote:

I saw that photon is a energy carrier and my friend says photon is a light energy carrier. My question is how can we specify that photon is always light energy?

What do you mean by "light energy"? Are radio waves and gamma rays "light"?

Gamma waves are certainly light... And all light is energy... Matter in movement is energy...

1 Reply

@Krokc,

Please explain the question better.

Any science question needs to mean something. No scientist can answer this question without knowing how "light energy" is different from any other type of energy. How could we test to see whether the energy we are detecting is light energy or not? If the question has no meaning, it would be rather hard to do an experiment to settle the question. You can't even use logic to settle an illogical question.

So what does your question mean?

1 Reply

@Fido,

Quote:

Matter in movement is energy

This is a nonsensical statement.

1 Reply

@Krokc,

you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.

A photon can ONLY be a carrier of light energy - no other form of energy. Draw your own conclusion. I'm not understanding the confusion unless English is not your first language.

1 Reply

@Ragman,

Quote:

A photon can ONLY be a carrier of light energy - no other form of energy.

This is nonsense, Ragman.

Or, can you explain what it means? What experiment would you use to back up this statement?

The verb "carry" is also a very unscientific word in this context. It is meaningless at best and probably misleading as well.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

It is hardly nonsense. If you don't understand something, it's customary to inquire rather than attack something as nonsense.

"In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. "

1 Reply

@Ragman,

I understand the Physics just fine. Which is why I can say with confidence that what you are saying is nonsense.

You googled "photon carrier" (or something like it) and you came up with with quite that has the word "force carrier". By the way, force is not energy so your google trick doesn't even work.

I understand the term "force carrier". The reason I understand this term is because it refers to an experimental effect (i.e. an effect that can be shown by experiment). The people who coined this term were referring to a real effect that they understand through experiment. Those of us who have studied physics understand the experiments it refers to. You can google "photoelectric effect" if you are interested in the real physics.

Apparently the term "energy carrier" didn't come up in your little google search.

If you could explain the experiment behind this term, or explain what it means in a logical way, then it would not be nonsense. The reason I am calling it nonsense is because you haven't provided any explanation of any logic or experiment behind your claim.

0 Replies

Let me put this nonsense to rest with this little exercise.

I claim that a photon's energy is kinetic energy.

Can anyone explain how we could settle this discrepancy by experiment? For that matter, can anyone explain why a photon's energy being kinetic energy instead of "light" energy would make any difference at all to anything?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

There is the photo-electric effect where photons play a great part in automatic gate openings and closure. NASA also has plans for space travel using photons much as sea sailing ships to harvest the light coming from stars with photon sails. There some inertia in photons however slight but in space it would be very useful.

1 Reply

@talk72000,

Quote:

There is the photo-electric effect where photons play a great part in automatic gate openings and closure.

I don't think you mean the gates that you and I walk through. In this case you just need to be able to detect the light, it is a motor that actually opens the gate. The "gates" where the photoelectric effect is important are semiconductor gates used in logic circuitry (i.e. there are millions of them in the little chips that run your computer).

The solar sail stuff is really neat, and it is easier to understand if you think about the kinetic energy of the photons. Do you know why solar sails work where solar panels don't?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

The photo-electric part is the sensor. It triggers the motor. Semi-conductors are doped to act as transistor or elcetronic gate to pass electrons or not.

1 Reply

@talk72000,

Quote:

The photo-electric part is the sensor. It triggers the motor. Semi-conductors are doped to act as transistor or elcetronic gate to pass electrons or not.

Yes, you are correct on that. The "photoelectric effect" is the principle behind the semiconductors that are often used to detect light.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Please explain the question better.

Any science question needs to mean something. No scientist can answer this question without knowing how "light energy" is different from any other type of energy. How could we test to see whether the energy we are detecting is light energy or not? If the question has no meaning, it would be rather hard to do an experiment to settle the question. You can't even use logic to settle an illogical question.

So what does your question mean?

All energy is the same thing: matter in motion...

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
Matter in movement is energy

This is a nonsensical statement.

Not really... What do you think the m stands for in E=mc squared...

0 Replies

@Fido,

Quote:

All energy is the same thing: matter in motion...

No....

My car sitting motionless in my driveway has energy. When I start it and drive it down the street for a few moments it will have more "motion" and less energy.

A bullet has a heck of a lot of energy when it is sitting motionless before you fire it. When it exits the barrel of a gun going really fast, it has less energy.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
All energy is the same thing: matter in motion...

No....

My car sitting motionless in my driveway has energy. When I start it and drive it down the street for a few moments it will have more "motion" and less energy.

A bullet has a heck of a lot of energy when it is sitting motionless before you fire it. When it exits the barrel of a gun going really fast, it has less energy.

Yes there is potential energy and kinetic energy, but real energy cannot be stored up... As we see from fusion and fission, matter at certain stages has a lot of energy, and also a lot of motion, but if that motion is lost what you have is a bit of matter more dense having less energy and at the end of time all matter will be condensed and all of the energy will have gone out of it... I would urge you to look at the equasion again...

1 Reply

@Fido,

I don't know what the heck you are talking about. And, neither do you. There is nothing that is remotely scientific about these odd, meaningless strings of words you are typing.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I don't know what the heck you are talking about. And, neither do you. There is nothing that is remotely scientific about these odd, meaningless strings of words you are typing.

Let me go slowly... E= Matter (mass) times the speed of light squared... Now you know, only light,, photons move at the speed of light, and nothing at the speed of light squared, but it also works fractionally... If I were to light a match, or even a stick of dynamite, it may seem like a lot of energy is expended... The fact is that even with thermo nuclear explosions only a fraction of the critical mass is turned into energy, and then all sorts, infrared, x-rays, gamma rays, alpha and beta particles, and most damaging of all apparently is the number of neutrons that can penetrate all atoms because they have no charge... Try to remember that light is matter, and that a small amount of matter can be converted to a great deal of light with only a fraction of it visable... With that said, let me agree with you that I don't "know" what I am talking about... I have read some physics books, but the explanations they offer to one not inclined toward math are very pedestrian.... I think I grasp it in very general terms only... One of the books I have going now is about Oppenheimer, and of course the development of nuclear weapons... And I also read a history of the nuclear bomb, and actually quite a few books from Einstein's to highschool physics even back to early scientific papers by Copernicus and Galileo... I think it is fascinating, but that does not mean I think you grasp the subject better than myself...

0 Replies

Photon energy

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know