ive been trying to figure out why some photons possess more energy than others, and my research keeps coming back to “the frequency is directly proportional to the energy present within the photon” however i am struggling to find any explanations as to why this is. i suppose that this links to my secondary question of what type of energy do photons even posess, because clearly there is energy that is able to have tangible impacts on the world, but i dont really understand what form it takes.
In: Physics
To keep it eli5: a fast moving object has more kinetic energy, the frequency is the photon moving up and down, thats kinetic energy. The same is true for fast particles, the faster they are the more energy they have.
Kind of a tough one, but i think you may be looking for a intuitive connection where there sort of isn’t one. A photon stores energy as frequency because *thats what a photon is*! I realize this is basically a non-answer but I’m not sure how else to describe it.
If you wan’t to know *why* some photons have more energy than others, its because photons are created when charged particles transition between energy states, the energy of the photon is equal to the difference of energy between the states, so some photons *must* have higher energy than others. The way that photons “have energy” is in their frequency, thats just how that energy manifests.
Regular old objects with mass can have kinetic energy, but kinetic energy with massless particles doesn’t really make any sense, so they have this instead.
If it makes it *feel* any better, *massive* particles (literally – as in particles that have mass) also have frequencies, we call these [DeBroglie waves](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_wave).
Idk if any of this actually helps you. I’m no expert, but i can try again if you have follow up Qs.
To answer part of your question, a photon transmits electromagnetic radiation. It is *the* particle that carries electromagnetic force.
Now as to what it is, or what it has such propertie, nobody can or will know. This is what we call an axiomatic problem. A photon is a fundamental particle, which means it is irreducible and we just take it’s existence and properties as a fact on which to build.
You are looking for “why” when all we can answer is “what”. That is: the universe appears to be like this, we don’t have the blueprints to be able to answer why, and nobody has yet come up with some deeper theory that might explain it.
The energy stored in a photon is defined by its frequency. They aren’t separate things, the photon vibrating at a certain frequency is how the energy is stored.
Nobody knows for sure.
It seems likely that it’s the energy that causes the frequency, not the other way around. But that’s only speculative.
Go grab a slinky or a string it’ll help for this visualization. The energy of waves of all types are proportional to their frequency, this isn’t just true of electromagnetic waves aka photons. With your slinky, pay it down on the floor, and tie one end down (you’ll need a lot of space on the floor for this). Then holding the other end, make a standing wave of the lowest frequency you can. Now make a standing wave of a higher frequency. You’ll notice really quickly that it takes a lot more energy from you to keep the higher frequency wave going. In reality it’s a different type of wave than this causing photons, but it’s still a wave. The same principles apply. You can think of the wave components having to restore their positions faster aka moving up and down faster to complete a cycle in less time, if you want, it’s not super accurate but it works for the visualization. To that point, you would think it’s kinetic energy but it’s not….it’s…okay I don’t have an answer for that part it’s just energy? Everything is energy and it’s kind of a nebulous non intuitive thing at that scale.
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