PHOTON CONCEPT FAILS TO EXPLAIN

AMPLITUDE MODULATION IN BROADCASTING

SEE ALSO THE ARTICLE ON THE PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT YET FINALIZED—01-2006

Johann Marinsek
johann@marinsek.com

If a radio station’s antenna emits for instance at 800 kHz then we must tune the electric
resonance circuit of the radio to 800 kHz in order to receive the transmitted signals. Only
the resonance frequency can bring the circuit into oscillation. A radio station emitting at
1000 kHz is not audible when the radio receiver is tuned on 800 kHz. But the receiver
needs also an antenna. The dimensions of the antenna must be adjusted to wavelengths of
the received EM waves.
To increase the power of the radio station would not enable the radio to receive the
transmitted signals. Broadcasting can be easily explained with the wave theory of
electromagnetic radiation due to resonance.
Recall that in the photoelectric effect an incident light ray can only release an electron of
a metallic surface if the frequency of the light has a certain minimum frequency and that
for lower frequencies even an increase in intensity cannot release the electron. Exactly
this behaviour was the reason to invent the photon whose energy is dependent only on
frequency and not on amplitude. (The photon is a particle and/or a wave but a wave
without an amplitude!)
But there is no ontological necessity to introduce the chimerical essence of the photon
because the fact that the electron can be released only with a certain minimum frequency
is easily explainable in terms of wave theory, namely as a resonance effect.
It is remarkable that Marconi and Braun, the inventors of broadcasting, in their 1909
Nobel lectures did not mention anywhere the concept of a photon. Surely a noble
discretion because Millikan’s paper was published in 1905. We will discuss these topics
below.
To broadcast music and speech the amplitude or frequency modulation technique was
invented. In amplitude modulation for instance a carrier wave and the electromagnetic
waves that correspond to music and speech are mixed up. In the AM receiver
demodulation makes it possible to listen to music.

The two graphs show the method. Remark that the audible signals necessarily has
frequency and amplitude. The high frequency of the carrier wave is not audible.
Amplitude modulation and the transmitted amplitude modulated wave are not explainable
in terms of photon theory. Continuing, photons must be created in an excited atom.
Textbooks do not explain how the atoms of an antenna are excited by both the electric
current and tension in order to produce photons.
To the present author no attempts to explain broadcasting in terms of the photon concept
are known. The photon is a chimera. It is a spinning particle without charge and mass; its
wave nature has wavelength and frequency but no amplitude. Intensity of radiation is not
due to higher amplitude but due to more photons of the same frequency. The energy of
electromagnetic waves is not truly expressed by the alleged natural law E = hν, where ν
is the frequency. There must be a dependence on amplitude too. Please see the articles on
the photoelectric effect and on the Compton effect.