CHAPER 33 : WAVE PARTICLE DUALITY 33.1 Compton Scattering of photons The concept of photon introduced a dual character to light; light as made up of photons i.e., particles and of light as radiation i.e. waves. Therefore it can be said that light is a wave-particle duality.
Classical Physics and common sense make us consider waves and particles as anti-thesis of each other; a wave cannot have particle characteristics and a particle cannot have wave characteristics.
However, Photo-electric effect is so far, the only phenomenon where the particle nature of light is manifest explicitly. Bohr's theory - despite experimental confirmation of existence of quantized energy levels of electrons in atoms by Frank and Hertz- provides indirect support to the particle nature of light.
What we need is indisputable evidence of the particle nature of light. This is provided in the Compton scattering of light.
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