ELI5- If light is both a wave and a particle, why isn’t there visible buildup of those particles from the sun and whatnot?
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Forget the wave particle duality for a moment, because it doesn’t do an awful lot to help this discussion.
Light is photons. Small points particles that move super fast.
When a photon hits an atom, the atom will absorb it. You can think of the photon likes it’s a packet of energy. It’s not quite as lumpy as regular particles.
It’s like heat in chemistry. Heat is a bit like atoms in a way. We used to think there was some sort of heat atom that was carrying the heat from place to place, but it’s not quite like that. Chemical systems can magic heat out of existence or into existence.
The same is so for photons. Particles spit them out or absorb them all the time. The particle gains energy when it eats a photon and loses energy when it creates a photon.
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