5 PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT AND WAVE THEORY
OF LIGHT
The wave nature of light was well established by the end of the nineteenth
century The phenomena of interference, diffraction and polarisation were
explained in a natural and satisfactory way by the wave picture of light According to this picture, light is an electromagnetic wave consisting  of
electric and magnetic fields with continuous distribution of energy over
the region of space over which the wave is extended Let us now see if this
Rationalised 2023-24
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Dual Nature of Radiation
and Matter
wave picture of light can explain the observations on photoelectric
emission given in the previous section