The energy flux of sunlight reaching the surface of the earth is $1.388 \times 10^{3}\ \text{W/m}^2$. How many photons (nearly) per square metre are incident on the Earth per second? Assume that the photons in the sunlight have an average wavelength of $550\ \text{nm}$.

The energy flux of sunlight reaching the surface of the earth is 1.388 × 10³W/m². How many photons (nearly) pe

Exercises · 11.5

1.388 \times 10^{3}\ \text{W/m}^2

Sikkim CbseNCERTSubjective· 2mImportance★★★★★

10% · 8/83 Questions

🔒 Locked · start free trial →

You're viewing a preview — the full solution, concept, methods & PYQ mapping are locked.

Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →

Concept understanding — Photon Energy

Photon Energy: The Energy Carried by Light

Light does not carry its energy in a continuous stream. It comes in discrete packets — like individual drops instead of a steady hose. Each packet is called a photon: the smallest possible unit of light of a given frequency. You cannot have half a photon; it is all or nothing.

The Intuition: Colour Determines Energy

Red light and blue light are both light, but they behave differently — blue light causes sunburn and drives chemical reactions more readily than red. The reason is that the colour (frequency) of light directly fixes how much energy each photon carries, and blue photons carry more energy than red photons.

The Planck–Einstein Relation

The energy $E$ of a single photon is directly proportional to its frequency $f$ , and inversely proportional to its wavelength $\lambda$ :

E = h f = \frac{h c}{\lambda}

Where:

$E$ = energy of one photon (joules, J)
$f$ = frequency (hertz, Hz)
$\lambda$ = wavelength (metres, m)
$c$ = speed of light in vacuum ( $3.00 \times 10^8$ m/s)
$h$ = Planck's constant ( $6.626 \times 10^{-34}$ J·s)

Important

Planck's constant $h$ is extremely tiny, so an individual photon carries a very small amount of energy — which is why we never feel single photons striking our skin.

What This Tells You

Higher frequency = higher energy. Gamma rays have extremely energetic photons; radio waves have very low-energy photons.
Shorter wavelength = higher energy. Ultraviolet photons are more energetic than visible-light photons; infrared photons are less.
Energy is quantised. Light energy comes in fixed packets — you can have 1, 2, or 1000 photons, but never 0.5. This was Max Planck's revolutionary idea of 1900.

This is why UV light causes sunburn (UV photons carry enough energy to damage DNA, while visible photons do not), why X-ray photons are energetic enough to pass through soft tissue but get absorbed by bone, and why a photon needs enough energy to actually break a bond or drive a photochemical/biological reaction, rather than merely wavelength-dependent intensity.

A Concrete Example

Note

Question: Which has more energy — a photon of red light ( $\lambda = 700$ nm) or a photon of blue light ( $\lambda = 450$ nm)?

Since $E = \dfrac{hc}{\lambda}$ , energy is inversely proportional to wavelength, so the shorter-wavelength blue photon carries more energy:

Red: $E_{\text{red}} = \dfrac{(6.626 \times 10^{-34})(3.00 \times 10^8)}{700 \times 10^{-9}} \approx 2.84 \times 10^{-19}$ J …

Why this formula?

Why Photon Energy is $E = hf$ — The Reasoning Behind the Formula

The formula $E = hf$ is not something you memorise and plug numbers into. It comes from a deep shift in how physicists understood light.

The problem that forced the formula

By the late 1800s, classical physics said light was a wave — continuous, carrying energy in proportion to its intensity (brightness). But blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect showed something bizarre: when you shine light on a metal, electrons are ejected only if the light's frequency is above a certain threshold, no matter how bright the light is. Below that frequency, even the brightest lamp won't kick out a single electron. Classically this made no sense — a wave's energy depends on amplitude, not frequency.

Einstein's radical idea (1905)

Einstein proposed that light comes in discrete packets — photons — each carrying a fixed energy that depends only on its frequency, with Planck's constant $h$ as the proportionality:

A single photon's energy is $E = hf$ , where $f$ is the frequency of the light.

This directly explains the photoelectric effect: an electron needs a minimum energy (the work function $\phi$ ) to escape. If a photon's energy $hf < \phi$ , no electron is ejected — regardless of how many photons you send, because each photon interacts with one electron individually.

Important

$E = hf$ is not derived from deeper principles — it is a postulate justified by the experiments it explains, and it unified optics with quantum mechanics.

The equivalent forms

Since $c = f\lambda$ for light in vacuum, the same idea in terms of wavelength is:

E = \frac{hc}{\lambda}

Use this when you're given $\lambda$ instead of $f$ . A photon also carries momentum (despite having no mass): …

Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →

Find the energy of one photon of wavelength 550 nm from $E=hc/\lambda$ , then divide the given energy flux by this photon energy to get the photon number flux, $N \approx 3.84 \times 10^{21}\ \text{m}^{-2}\text{s}^{-1}$ .

Step 1 — Energy of a single photon.

E = \frac{hc}{\lambda} = \frac{(6.63\times10^{-34}\ \text{J s})(3\times10^{8}\ \text{m/s})}{550\times10^{-9}\ \text{m}}

E = \frac{1.989\times10^{-25}}{5.50\times10^{-7}} = 3.62\times10^{-19}\ \text{J}

Step 2 — Photon flux from the given power flux.

The energy flux (power per unit area) is shared among many photons, each carrying $E$ . So the number of photons crossing one square metre per second is …

Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →

←Previous question11.4 — Monochromatic light of wavelength 632.8nm is produced by a helium-neon…→Next question11.6 — In an experiment on photoelectric effect, the slope of the cut-off vol…

🎓Unlock everything free for 14 days

Unlock everything free for 14 days