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Dual Behaviour of Electromagnetic Radiation
The particle nature of light posed a dilemma for scientists. One the one hand, it could explain the photoelectric effect satisfactorily but on the other hand, this was not consistent with the known wave behavior of light which could account for the phenomena of interference and diffraction. The only way to resolve the dilemma was to accept the idea that light possesses both particle and wave-like properties, i.e., light has dual behavior. Depending on the experiment, we find that light behaves either as a wave or as a stream of particles. Whenever radiation interacts, with matter, it displays particle like properties, in contrast to the wavelike properties (interference and diffraction) it exhibits when it propagates. This concept was totally alien to the way the scientists though about matter and radiation and it took them a long time to become convinced of its validity. It turns out, as you shall see later, that some microscopic particles like electrons also exhibit this wave-particle duality.