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As always, a big part of the task is to figure out where the student
is coming from. One hypothesis to consider is that the student may
have an unduly crude notion of a photon as a "particle", such that
the photon supposedly exists in advance and is emitted by an atom the
way a bullet is shot from a gun. In reality, it doesn't work that way.
As a very general rule, the wave-mechanical description is safer and
better. Anything you think of as a "particle" can be described in
terms of waves, i.e. a wave packet. The converse is not true; in
general it's hard to describe a wave in terms of any naïve classical
notion of "particles".
If that's not where the student is coming from, please clarify the
question.
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