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How particle nature of light can be observed in material world? To common man light does not hit them or make them fall when light beam is projected on them.

uncia
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  • Newtons corpuscular theory way is one of the path of explanation! – drvrm Mar 23 '16 at 06:37
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the question isn't about physics but rather how to explain physics to a layman – John Rennie Mar 23 '16 at 06:39
  • Possibly useful: What is the relation between electromagnetic wave and photon? – John Rennie Mar 23 '16 at 06:45
  • Why would you tell that person something that is 100% wrong? Nothing good can come from that, neither for you, nor for that person. – CuriousOne Mar 23 '16 at 06:52
  • @drvrm: Newton's corpuscular theory was wrong back then and it's still wrong today. No need to resurrect the dead ideas of science history. – CuriousOne Mar 23 '16 at 06:53
  • < zero physics knowledge person? Lets say a caveman->well my comment was on an initiation of the historical development of knowledge e.g. Bohr's theory is not correct but we do discuss it in semi classical frame. – drvrm Mar 23 '16 at 07:25
  • @drvrm: Why are we discussing Bohr's model? Certainly not because we need it or because it can teach anything important. Sometimes high school science is simply 100 years behind real science. Bohr's model is one of these historical artifacts that should be eliminated as soon as possible but that will stick around way longer than necessary (you have 10 years to eliminate it from the high school textbooks before the century is up). – CuriousOne Mar 23 '16 at 07:37
  • You'd have trouble explaining the concept of "something so small you cannot even see it" to a caveman, much less the particle nature of light. Lets say, rather, a 12-year-old boy with no physics instruction (preferably one that doesn't live in caves). – Neil Mar 23 '16 at 08:05
  • Don't you remember how much trouble Geico got into by implying that cavemen were of low intelligence? – Carl Witthoft Mar 23 '16 at 14:07

1 Answers1

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One can explain that there is a smallest possible amount of light - that is very small - and that can be measured one amount at a time.

This amount is called a photon, and it can not be felt since it has very tiny momentum (and no mass).

LearnOPhile
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    You should take the part about "it can not be felt" out, that's not entirely true, neither for visible light nor for high energy photons. In case of vision even the human eye comes remarkably close to the single photon threshold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_threshold) and neither momentum nor mass play any role in photon detection. – CuriousOne Mar 23 '16 at 07:35