Eli5 why is photon considered a particle too?
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They have the particular quality of being the carrier of the electromagnetic forces.
They group together macroscopically to give rise to electromagnetic waves and light.
Photons are massless so they travel at the speed of light.
Photons are also bosons, meaning that you can have many of them in the same state (or place) without that being an issue (quarks cannot do that for example).
The photon is also its own antiparticle.
Photons are involved with chemistry in that they mediate the electromagnetic force that’s at the root of a lot (but not all) of why atoms and molecules behave the way they do in chemical processes. From the perspective of chemistry, they aren’t particles the same way atoms are.
If you’re looking at it from the perspective of physics, they’re particles because they come in distinct packets of energy, with that packet having particular properties and it having to interact all at once with other subatomic particles.
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