The Particle Picture
Classical Mechanics
Level
1
Which of the following does not constitute evidence for the particle nature of light/matter?
The photoelectric effect
Thomson's cathode ray experiment
Young's double slit experiment
The black-body radiation problem
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1 solution
The black-body radiation problem was solved by assuming that only a certain number of photons could fill each quantized energy level, evidence for the particle picture.
Thomson's cathode ray experiments showed that a free electric charge could be carried across a vacuum, evidence that some particle (the electron) was carrying this charge since no charged waves are known.
In the photoelectric effect, electron ejection from metals scales with wavelength instead of intensity. That is, the power of the classical "wave" is irrelevant, implying that it is number of quanta that carries the energy in the light.
Only Young's double-slit experiment of these 4 is in support of the wave nature of light and not the particle nature, since it predicts interference from photons (even single photons, it was later determined) entering a screen with 2 slits.