Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The elementary particle of light and other electromagnetic radiation; the quantum of electromagnetic energy. The photon is the massless, neutral vector boson that mediates electromagnetic interactions.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun physics The quantum of light and other electromagnetic energy, regarded as a discrete particle having zero rest mass, no electric charge, and an indefinitely long lifetime. It is a gauge boson.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a quantum of electromagnetic radiation; an elementary particle that is its own antiparticle

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From photo- + -on.

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Examples

  • The measurement of the twin photon is intentionally delayed (8 nanoseconds) after the measurement of the signal photon.

    Are Changes Brewing and How Does the Mind Fit In? 2008

  • Optimum antennae shape for both absorption and emission of a photon is a dipole FM antennae where the 2 opposing leads are set at the halfwave of desired cutoff.

    New Solar Panels That Work At Night | Inhabitat 2008

  • Every detection of a photon is a measurement, resulting in the photon being observed just there.

    The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 2005

  • For example, if you illuminate a surface that contains two narrow slits, each photon from the source takes both paths available to it and goes simultaneously through both slits.

    Victor Stenger: The Grand Accident Victor Stenger 2010

  • For example, if you illuminate a surface that contains two narrow slits, each photon from the source takes both paths available to it and goes simultaneously through both slits.

    Victor Stenger: The Grand Accident Victor Stenger 2010

  • For example, if you illuminate a surface that contains two narrow slits, each photon from the source takes both paths available to it and goes simultaneously through both slits.

    Victor Stenger: The Grand Accident Victor Stenger 2010

  • Perhaps it was intentional to make the aliens a bit developmentally challenged, but every time an alien with a friggin 'photon cannon stared in stupefied confusion at the humans hurling rocks and arrows at them rather than blasting them into oblivion, I had to roll my eyes.

    Rabid Rewind: Alien Apocalypse 2010

  • However, the long-distance teleportation of a photon is only a small step towards developing applications for the procedure.

    Teleportation Achieved Over 10 Miles | Impact Lab 2010

  • For example, if you illuminate a surface that contains two narrow slits, each photon from the source takes both paths available to it and goes simultaneously through both slits.

    Victor Stenger: The Grand Accident Victor Stenger 2010

  • For example, if you illuminate a surface that contains two narrow slits, each photon from the source takes both paths available to it and goes simultaneously through both slits.

    Victor Stenger: The Grand Accident Victor Stenger 2010

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  • "The modern photon concept was developed gradually by Albert Einstein to explain experimental observations that did not fit the classical wave model of light. In particular, the photon model accounted for the frequency dependence of light's energy, and explained the ability of matter and radiation to be in thermal equilibrium. It also accounted for anomalous observations, including the properties of black body radiation, that other physicists, most notably Max Planck, had sought to explain using semiclassical models, in which light is still described by Maxwell's equations, but the material objects that emit and absorb light, do so in amounts of energy that are quantized (i.e., they change energy only by certain particular discrete amounts and cannot change energy in any arbitrary way). Although these semiclassical models contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, many further experiments starting with Compton scattering of single photons by electrons, first observed in 1923, validated Einstein's hypothesis that light itself is quantized. In 1926 the chemist Gilbert N. Lewis coined the name photon for these particles, and after 1927, when Arthur H. Compton won the Nobel Prize for his scattering studies, most scientists accepted the validity that quanta of light have an independent existence, and Lewis' term photon for light quanta was accepted."

    --Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Photon&oldid=509270454)

    August 27, 2012