eli5: Why can’t the photoelectric effect be explained by the wave theory of light?
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I read a great explanation for this effect. Imagine that there are a bunch of people being held in jail. If they can pay $100 they will be released. If you go and drop dollar bills into the jail, they will be spread out among the inmates and no single person will have enough to get out. It doesn’t matter if you increase the number of dollar bills that you drop into the jail because there are so many inmates that no one gets the critical amount to get out.
But, if you start dropping $100 bills, each bill will pay the way for a single person and people will start getting out.
The $1 bills are like low frequency light. It doesn’t matter how bright the light is, it won’t trigger the photoelectric effect. But, if you shine higher frequency light at the cell, each individual photon has enough energy to knock an electron off and you will start seeing current flow.
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