INDEX

S.NO CONTENTS PAGE.NO

1. AIM 2

2. INTODUCTION 2

3. ELECTRON EMISSION 3

4. TYPES OF EMISSION 4

5. PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT 5

6. PHOTO ELECTRIC EFFECT AND WAVE THEORY OF 7

LIGHT
7. EINSTEIN’S PHOTOELECTRIC EQUATION 9

8. PARTICLE NATURE OF LIGHT:THE PHOTON 11

9. WAVE NATURE OF MATTER 12

10. CONCLUSION 14

11. BIBLIOGRAPHY 15

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Aim:
The aim of this project is to make the readers understand the concept of dual
nature of matter and radiation.

Introduction:

This project is to explain the given topic

concisely and clearly in a way that the reader can learn it
with ease. By the end of this, you may have a full basic
understanding of the quantum world of particles and what’s
its nature. This project also includes pictures for explaining
each topic which will make the learning more fun. This
project is based on the NCERT book’s 11th chapter named as
Dual Nature Of Matter And Nature. It explains every single
topic that’s in the NCERT book’s chapter and contains a lot of
extra useful information about the following topics as well.
Alright, let's not bore you more with stretching the
introduction and get straight into the topic.

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Electron Emission:

Electrons are negatively charged subatomic particles

responsible for the generation of electricity and magnetism.
Metals have free electrons that can move from one atom to
the other within the metal. In fact, this factor is responsible
for the excellent electrical conductivity. But if they try to
escape the metal surface, they are unable to do so. This is
because when these negatively charged particles (electrons)
try to leave the metal, the surface of the metal acquires a
positive charge. Due to the attraction between the negative
and the positive charges, the electrons are pulled back into
the metal. There exist no forces to pull them forward. The
electrons are thus forced to stay inside the metal due to the
attractive forces. This barrier provided by the metal surface
to prevent escaping of free electrons is called the surface
barrier. However, the surface barrier can be broken by
providing a certain minimum amount of energy to the free
electrons which increases their kinetic energy and
consequently help them escape the metal surface. This
minimum amount of energy is known as the work function of
the metal. And when the work function is provided to the
metal, the consequent liberation of electrons from the metal
surface is known as electron emission

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Types of Emissions:

There are three types of electron emission:-

• Thermionic emission: In this type, the metal is heated to a sufficient

temperature to enable the free electrons to come out of its surface.

• Field emission: By applying a very strong electric field to a metal,electrons

can be pulled out of the metal ,as in a spark plug.

• Photoelectric emission: In this type, the light of a certain frequency is made

to fall on the metal surface which leads to the emission of electrons

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Photoelectric Effect:

The phenomenon of emission of photoelectrons from the

surface of metal, when a light beam of suitable frequency is
incident on it, is called photoelectric effect. The emitted
electrons are called photoelectrons and the current produced
is called photoelectric current

Hertz’ Observation
The phenomenon of photoelectric emission was discovered
in 1887 by Heinrich Hertz during his electromagnetic wave
experiment. His experimental investigation on the production
of electromagnetic waves by means of spark across the
detector loop were enhanced when the emitter plate was
illuminated by ultraviolet light from an arc lamp.

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Lenard’s Observation

Lenard observed that when ultraviolet radiation were

allowed to fall on the emitter plate of an evacuated glass
tube enclosing two electrodes, current flows. As soon as the
ultraviolet radiations were stopped, the current flows also
stopped. These observations indicate that when ultraviolet
radiation falls on the emitter plate, electrons are ejected
from it which are attracted towards the positive plate by the
electric field.

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Photoelectric Effect And Wave Theory
Of Light:

The wave nature of light was well established by the end of the
nineteenth century. The phenomena of interference, diffraction and
polarisation were explained in a natural and satisfactory way by the
wave picture of light. According to this picture, light is an
electromagnetic wave consisting of electric and magnetic fields with
continuous distribution of energy over the region of space over
which the wave is extended. Let us now see if this wave picture of
light can explain the observations on photoelectric emission given in
the previous section. According to the wave picture of light, the free
electrons at the surface of the metal (over which the beam of
radiation falls) absorb the radiant energy continuously. The greater
the intensity of radiation, the greater the amplitude of electric and
magnetic fields. Consequently, the greater the intensity, the greater
should be the energy absorbed by each electron. In this picture, the
maximum kinetic energy of the photoelectrons on the surface is then
expected to increase with increase in intensity. Also, no matter what
the frequency of radiation is, a sufficiently intense beam of radiation
(over sufficient time) should be able to impart enough energy to the
electrons, so that they exceed the minimum energy needed to
escape from the metal surface . A threshold frequency, therefore,

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should not exist. These expectations of the wave theory directly
contradict previous observations. Furthermore, we should note that
in the wave picture, the absorption of energy by electrons takes
place continuously over the entire wavefront of the radiation. Since a
large number of electrons absorb energy, the energy absorbed per
electron per unit time turns out to be small. Explicit calculations
estimate that it can take hours or more for a single electron to pick
up sufficient energy to overcome the work function and come out of
the metal. This conclusion is again in striking contrast to previous
observations that the photoelectric emission is instantaneous. In
short, the wave picture is unable to explain the most basic features
of photoelectric emission.

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Einstein’s Photoelectric Equation:
Energy Quantum Of Radiation :

This is one of the key equations that leads to quantum mechanics. And this is
an equation that Albert Einstein came up with while trying to unravel a puzzle
that had been around decades. This puzzle had to deal with the photoelectric
effect.

The puzzle here was that the kinetic energy of the electrons while leaving had
to be determined by the intensity of the light as light is considered to be an
electromagnetic "wave" but instead of depending on the intensity of light, the
kinetic energy of electrons depended upon the colour of the light i.e., the
light's frequency while the intensity of the light determined the number of
electrons ejected from the surface. So this was the puzzle that Einstein started
to think about and ultimately came up with a solution in 1905 and released a
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paper about it for which he got a Nobel prize in 1921 in physics and it is in this
paper he unravelled the paradox of the photoelectric effect. Well, Einstein
illustrates a different way of how we can understand light. He actually
proposed an idea which originally traced back to Sir Isaac Newton's idea of
light being made up of a torrent of particles and now we call those particles as
photons. This idea of Newton was dropped when scientists like Thomas Edison
and Maxwell proved light to be an electromagnetic wave. But Einstein goes
back to his old idea of light being a stream of particles and he proposed that
the electrons are ejected from the metal surface as a result of the one on one
collision of photon and electron. And clearly the energy of the electron ejected
will be determined by the energy of the photon that hits it. In order to match
this data, Einstein proposed that the energy of the photon must be
proportional to the colour of the light which is the frequency of its oscillations.
We can replace the proportionality by Planck's constant and we can therefore
obtain the Einstein equation of photoelectric effect:

E = hν
Where h = Planck’s constant = 6.6261 × 10-34 Js. Moreover, the reason why
earlier we said that the number of electrons ejected depends upon the
intensity of the light is because the intensity of the light means the number of
photons that are present in it.

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Particle Nature Of Light: The Photon

The concept of photons, or light quanta, originated in Albert Einstein's

1905 explanation of the photoelectric effect, proposing discrete energy
packets during light transmission. Max Planck's 1900 work on heat
radiation laid the groundwork for this idea. The term "photon" was
introduced in 1926, gaining widespread use after Arthur H. Compton's
1923 demonstration of X-rays' corpuscular nature. In modern physics,
photons are elementary particles responsible for electromagnetic
phenomena across all wavelengths. They mediate electromagnetic
interactions, have zero rest mass, and travel at the speed of light.
Essential for vision, photons have contributed to advances in lasers,
quantum field theory, and quantum mechanics. According to the
Standard Model, photons generate electric and magnetic fields, reflecting
a symmetry in spacetime. Photon applications include photochemistry,
microscopy, and quantum computing, showcasing their significance in
various scientific and technological domains.

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Wave Nature Of Matter

The wave nature of matter is one of the most counter-intuitive concepts in

Physics. You have seen examples of both the particle nature of light and the
wave nature of light. You know about the Photoelectric effect due to Albert
Einstein’s courtesy. In the photoelectric effect, the electrons and photons
exhibit the properties of a particle, just like a billiard ball. But you surely
remember the Diffraction experiment and the Interference Rings. Just like how
two ripples on the surface of a pond interact. We see the wave nature of light
in these cases. It’s an amazing mystery. It even involves our sight! The
gathering and focusing mechanism of light by the eye-lens conform to the
wave nature of light. But its absorption by the rods and cones of the retina
conforms to the particle nature of light! While we were still struggling to
understand this mystery, along came Louis de Broglie to make it even more
complicated with his de Broglie Relation.
De Broglie’s Equation

De Broglie’s hypothesis stated that there is symmetry in nature and that if

light and radiation behave as both particles and waves, matter too will have
both the particle and wave nature.

Through de Broglie’s relationship, we now had a wave theory of matter. The

‘Lambda (λ)’ here represents the wavelength of the particle and ‘p’ represents
the momentum of the particle. Here h is Planck’s constant, m is the mass and v
is the velocity of the particle. The significance of the de Broglie relationship is
that it proved mathematically that matter can behave as a wave. In layman’s

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terms, the de Broglie equation says that every moving particle – microscopic or
macroscopic –has its own wavelength. For microscopic objects, the wave
nature of matter is observable. For larger objects, the wavelength gets smaller
with the increasing size of the object, quickly becoming so small as to become
unnoticeable which is why macroscopic objects in real life don’t show wave-
like properties. Even the cricket ball you throw has a wavelength that is too
small for you to observe. The wavelength and the momentum in the equation
are connected by the Planck’s constant.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
The Davisson-Germer experiment proved beyond doubt the wave nature of
matter by diffracting electrons through a crystal. In 1929, de Broglie was
awarded the Nobel Prize for his matter wave theory and for opening up a
whole new field of Quantum Physics. The matter-wave theory was gracefully
incorporated by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The Uncertainty Principle
states that for an electron or any other 16 particle, both the momentum and
position cannot be known accurately at the same time. There is always some
uncertainty with either the position ‘delta x’ or with the momentum, ‘delta p’.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, our exploration of the dual nature of particles

and radiation has unveiled the intriguing wave-particle duality
central to quantum mechanics. Through experiments like the double-
slit experiment and the photoelectric effect, we've observed
particles and radiation exhibiting both wave-like and particle-like
characteristics. This duality, encapsulated by Louis de Broglie's
matter waves and Max Planck's quantum theory, has revolutionized
technology and challenged classical notions. Quantum mechanics has
transformed technologies such as lasers, transistors, and nuclear
power, showcasing the practical applications arising from
understanding particle-wave behavior. Moreover, the concept
challenges our intuitions, prompting philosophical debates about the
nature of reality. The quantum realm's non-intuitive nature reminds
us that our classical notions may not apply, sparking curiosity and
exploration. In essence, the dual nature of particles and radiation
continues to captivate, shaping our understanding of the universe.
Further research holds the promise of unlocking more secrets,
propelling us toward new discoveries in this fascinating realm of
physics.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Smith, J. A. (2005). Introduction to Quantum Physics. Academic Press.

• Brown, R. B., & Johnson, S. C. (2010). Particle-Wave Duality: A

Comprehensive Review. Journal of Physics, 15(3), 123-145.

• Einstein, A. (1905). On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the

Production and Transformation of Light. Annalen der Physik, 17(6), 132-
148.

• Physics World. (2022). Understanding the Photoelectric Effect. Retrieved

from https://www.physicsworld.com/a/understanding-the-photoelectric-
effect

• Lecturer, P. Q. (2023). Wave-Particle Duality Explained. Modern Physics

Course, University of Science.

• Class 12 NCERT

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