My partner and I are casually chatting about how strange the electromagnetic spectrum is, as we sometimes do. The idea came up of creating an antenna that vibrates at the right frequency to produce various colors of light. But then I remembered that “light is both a wave and a particle” … so can someone how photons (right?) relate to the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum?
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Yes photons of visible light are [part of the EM spectrum](https://gamma-sci.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/7.2.21-Electromagnetic-Spectrum.jpg). Visible light has a wavelength that’s shorter than infrared and radio, but longer than ultraviolet and x-rays. But it’s all just electromagnetic waves of different frequencies.
A good way to ELI5 the idea of a “photon” is to think of it as a “[wave packet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Wave_packet.gif)” – it’s still made of electromagnetic waves (aka ripples in the electric and magnetic fields), but each photon is like a little [bunch of ripples that moves along in a packet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Wave_packet_%28dispersion%29.gif?20160130184257) that *together* has some particle-like properties as well as its wave-like properties.
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