Will the number of photoelectrons ejected be same if intensity remains same but frequency is different?

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Assuming incident frequency is above threshold frequency

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

One way to measure intensity is by the energy being given off by the light, and since different frequencies have different energies/photon, then the number of photons given off would have to change with frequency to maintain the same intensity. Thinkink of it this way may be useful for example if you have a solar panel and want to know how much energy it is harvesting from the sun.

Another way to measure intensity is with the candela (and I admittedly know very little about this), which is a more complicated unit that is better suited to describe how bright humans perceive a light. It takes into consideration the area the light is spread out, number of photons, and the color of light. So here again, number of photons changes with frequency. Think of it like this, you can’t see radio waves, so you would say they have 0 Candela intensity, even though they are giving off a lot of photons.

A third way to talk about intensity would be in photons/time, and if you used this metric then number of photons would remain the same regardless of frequency. This method is useful for things like nuclear chemistry, knowing the rate of particle emission can help determine how fast an element will deteriorate.

TL;DR Depends on what units your using, but generally the number of photos emitted changes with frequency.

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