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Consider. Hertz observed (~1885, I think) sparks emanating from
metal surfaces that were exposed to uv light while being subject to
strong electric fields. It wasn't until 15 years later that JJ Thompson
determined that cathode rays had corpuscular constituents with an e/m
that we now ascribe to the electron. It was not understood at that time
that a metal could be described as a sea of electrons. And, most
importantly, it had not been determined, at the time of Einstein's paper,
that the maximum energy of a photoelectron was dependent on the frequency
of the incident light.
So Einstein's genius encompassed more than just the quantization
of light - it encompassed an insight into the nature of electrical
conduction in metals, the nature of the metallic state (including, I
believe, the concept of the "work function"), and a view of the
interaction of electromagnetic waves with charged corpuscles.
At 04:05 PM 11/5/00 +0200, Savinainen Antti wrote:Of course, John intended to be replying to Antti's second sentence, and
The question was: which version is consistent with the 19th century physics?
Of course these versions cannot be experimentally tested because both are
wrong.
Exactly! Both are wrong.