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Talk:Photoelectric effect (view source)
Revision as of 03:11, October 25, 2008
, 03:11, October 25, 2008answer to R. Schlafly
:::I also don't believe the photoelectric effect was the reason Einstein got the Nobel prize. Einstein was already famous for relativity, and the committee felt pressure to give him a prize, but a prize for relativity would have been controversial for various reasons. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 18:34, 24 October 2008 (EDT)
:::I also don't believe the photoelectric effect was the reason Einstein got the Nobel prize. Einstein was already famous for relativity, and the committee felt pressure to give him a prize, but a prize for relativity would have been controversial for various reasons. [[User:RSchlafly|RSchlafly]] 18:34, 24 October 2008 (EDT)
::::This ''conventional wisdom'' is superficial: Planck stated that light can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete quanta, Einstein stated that light itself existed from discrete quanta - a ''quantum leap'' from Planck's idea, if you allow for this brutal metaphor.
::::From the same source you used: ''By exact measurements he [i.e., Lenard] showed that the number of electrons projected is proportional to the energy carried by the incident light, whilst their speed, that is to say, their kinetic energy, is quite independent of this number and varies only with the wavelength and increases when this diminishes.''
::::''These facts conflicted with current theory and were not explained until 1905, when Einstein produced his quantitative law and developed the theory of quanta of light or photons, which was verified much later by Millikan.''[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1905/lenard-bio.html]
::::So, Lenard didn't give an explanation for this phenomenon, but examined it in great detail.
::::In 1905, Max Planck was still of the opinion that light is only to be seen as a continuous wave, in fact, even in 1913 he -together with Nernst, Rubens and Wartburg - stated in his ''Wahlantrag'' for the ''Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften'' for Einstein: ''"Daß er in seinen Spekulationen gelegentlich auch einmal über das Ziel hinausgeschossen haben mag, wie z.B. in seiner Hypothese der Lichtquanten, wird man ihm nicht allzu sehr anrechnen dürfen. Denn ohne einmal ein Risiko zu wagen, läßt sich auch in der exaktesten Wissenschaft keine wirkliche Neuerung einführen."'' ''(He may have overshot the mark with his speculations sometimes, as regarding his hypothesis of the light quanta, but one can't hold this against him. Because without taking a risk, nothing really new can be introduced into the most exact of sciences)''
::::Einstein was awarded the Nobel prize ''for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect''. Surely, the Nobel committee could have chosen from quite a few reason to give it to him, but it used this one. --[[User:BRichtigen|BRichtigen]] 23:11, 24 October 2008 (EDT)