13 Facts About Photoelectric effect

The Photoelectric effect has found use in electronic devices specialized for light detection and precisely timed electron emission.

Study of the photoelectric effect led to important steps in understanding the quantum nature of light and electrons and influenced the formation of the concept of wave–particle duality.

Classical setup to observe the photoelectric effect includes a light source, a set of filters to monochromatize the light, a vacuum tube transparent to ultraviolet light, an emitting electrode exposed to the light, and a collector whose voltage VC can be externally controlled.

In 1905, Einstein proposed a theory of the photoelectric effect using a concept first put forward by Max Planck that light consists of tiny packets of energy known as photons or light quanta.

In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic Photoelectric effect while studying the Photoelectric effect of light on electrolytic cells.

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The order of the metals for this Photoelectric effect was the same as in Volta's series for contact-electricity, the most electropositive metals giving the largest photo-electric Photoelectric effect.

In 1887, Heinrich Hertz observed the photoelectric effect and reported on the production and reception of electromagnetic waves.

In 1914, Robert A Millikan's highly accurate measurements of the Planck constant from the photoelectric effect supported Einstein's model, even though a corpuscular theory of light was for Millikan, at the time, "quite unthinkable".

In quantum perturbation theory of atoms and solids acted upon by electromagnetic radiation, the photoelectric effect is still commonly analyzed in terms of waves; the two approaches are equivalent because photon or wave absorption can only happen between quantized energy levels whose energy difference is that of the energy of photon.

Albert Einstein's mathematical description of how the photoelectric effect was caused by absorption of quanta of light was in one of his Annus Mirabilis papers, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light".

The Photoelectric effect was impossible to understand in terms of the classical wave description of light, as the energy of the emitted electrons did not depend on the intensity of the incident radiation.

The static charge created by the photoelectric effect is self-limiting, because a higher charged object doesn't give up its electrons as easily as a lower charged object does.

The probability of the photoelectric effect occurring is measured by the cross section of the interaction, s.