There are materials which absorb photons of shorter wavelength and emit photons of longer wavelength. Can ther

NCERT Exemplar · Q10

Q. There are materials which absorb photons of shorter wavelength and emit photons of longer wavelength. Can there be stable substances which absorb photons of larger wavelength and emit light of shorter wavelength?

Uttar Pradesh UpmspShort· 2mImportance★★★★★

60% · 50/83 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 →

No. Within the single-photon absorption/emission picture of this chapter, a stable substance cannot repeatedly absorb a lower-energy (longer-wavelength) photon and emit a higher-energy (shorter-wavelength) one, because that would mean the substance manufactures extra energy out of nothing on every cycle - a direct violation of energy conservation for a substance that returns, cycle after cycle, to the same stable state.

Why the usual case goes the other way

When a substance absorbs a photon, an electron jumps to a higher energy level. As it relaxes back down, some of that absorbed energy is typically lost as heat (lattice/molecular vibrations) before the remaining energy is re-emitted as a photon. So the emitted photon carries less energy than the one absorbed - and since $E=hc/\lambda$ , less energy means a longer wavelength. This is exactly the situation described in the question: absorb short wavelength (higher energy), emit longer wavelength (lower energy). The "lost" energy simply goes into heat; energy is conserved.

Why the reverse can't happen for a stable substance, cycle after cycle

Now ask the reverse question: can a stable substance absorb a longer-wavelength (lower-energy) photon and emit a shorter-wavelength (higher-energy) one?

For a single photon in, single photon out process, the emitted photon's energy cannot exceed the absorbed photon's energy unless extra energy is supplied from somewhere else. A truly "stable" substance - one that returns to its original state after each absorption-emission cycle, ready to repeat the process indefinitely, without being consumed or permanently changed - cannot manufacture that extra energy for free. If it always emitted a more energetic photon than it absorbed, it would be creating energy out of nothing every single cycle, which violates the conservation of energy. …

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

←Previous questionQ9 — (i) In the explanation of photoelectric effect, we assume one photon o…→Next questionQ11 — Do all the electrons that absorb a photon come out as photoelectrons?

Q.There are materials which absorb photons of shorter wavelength and emit photons of longer wavelength. Can there be stable substances which absorb photons of larger wavelength and emit light of shorter wavelength?

Concept understanding — Photon Energy

Photon Energy: The Energy Carried by Light

The Intuition: Colour Determines Energy

The Planck–Einstein Relation

What This Tells You

A Concrete Example

Why this formula?

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

The problem that forced the formula

Einstein's radical idea (1905)

The equivalent forms

Why the usual case goes the other way

Why the reverse can't happen for a stable substance, cycle after cycle

Method: Applying Energy Conservation to Photon Absorption–Emission Cycles

Steps

Q.There are materials which absorb photons of shorter wavelength and emit photons of longer wavelength. Can there be stable substances which absorb photons of larger wavelength and emit light of shorter wavelength?

Why the usual case goes the other way

Why the reverse can't happen for a stable substance, cycle after cycle

🎓Unlock everything free for 14 days

Unlock everything free for 14 days