INTROTUCDION In 1886 and 1886 Hertz discovered that an electric discharge between two electrodes occurs more readily

when there is ultraviolet light in one of the electrodes [1], in the same time Leonard show that the light helps to discharge of a metal by making electrons escape of metal plate. The ejection of electrons from a surface by the light is called the photoelectric effect. In 1905 A. Einstein in his miracle year wrote 3 amazing papers where one of then was to explain the photoelectric effect. Einstein took the Planks idea that radiation was quantized (Ultraviolet catastrophe) and Leonard experiment and proposed that the energy of the electron eject was proportional to the energy of the light with a constant (work function) that varies with different types of metal. THEORY The experimental facts of the photoelectric effect were appositive from that classical wave description of light from Maxwell [1]: From the wave theory the intensity of the light is proportional to Electric Field E, and the force that acts on the electron is eE, so the kinetic energy should be proportion to the light intensity, but this is not what the experiment shows. Kmax does not depend of the light intensity. The electron should be ejected from the surface if you apply the right amount of intensity (energy), but the fact is, that for each metal there is a characteristic frequency where below that the metal will not emit any electron. The classical view predicts that the electron will absorb energy from the light bean until have enough energy and escape from the surface, except this time (absorb and escape) does not agree with the experiment, where seems that the electron is emitted right a way when the light arrives in the metal surface.

With all this in mind Einstein wrote a theory (On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light)[2], to explain the photoelectric effect. The maximum Kinetic energy depends on the frequency of the light and the surface material. Einstein assumed that the energy, that the electron absorb, from the photon is related by: E =hv

By conservation of energy the maximum kinetic energy is Kmax = hv Phi Where Phi is the work function, is the energy that the electron need to scape the surface of metal, and its depend of the valence band, atomic arrangement of the metal. This simple idea can explain the facts that the (1) The Kmax does not depend on the intensity, however depend on the frequency of the light, (2) if the electron does not have the E(v) larger that the work function will not scape, and (3) the light come in small part of energy (photons) and when this photon has the right energy hit the electron, the electron will scape the surface. The photoelectric theory introduces the waveparticle duality concept that, the light some times behaves as particle or particle depending on the experiment. The astonishing thing of this experiment is that we can observer the two types of behave, where when the light pass through the grid acts like wave (interference) and then when it hit the metal surface the photoelectric effect occurs, the light is a particle.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP The setup can be seen on the figure (1), and it consist of monochromatic light of Mercury lamp, where this light will pass through a diffraction grid that will separate the spectrum of Mercury in different wavelengths, can be seen at table (1). Then we add the photoelectron detector in front of the light that pass the grid without diffract. After the light is focalized in the center of the photoelectron detector, we can turn the detector clockwise or anti clockwise to select each part (frequency) of the spectrum separately. The inside the photoelectron detector, figure (2), there is a photocell that is the metal that will lose electrons (photoelectron effect) and a photoelectron plate that will ketch the electron and this electron will create a current, but if you apply enough voltage so that all electron dont arrive at the photoelectron, thus will not have current, this voltage is called stopped voltage or retarding potential.

Table 3 The measurement of the Retarding potential (Vo) for each frequency. For the frequencies 518.5 and 548.99 it was added a yellow and green filter respectively. Figure 4 The graph show that the Retarding Potential has a linear dependence in the frequency and the slope of this linear fit is the Planks constant. Data and Analysis To get the Planks from equation (2), we measured the Retarding Potential (Vr) for each frequency (Table 2). The Retarding potential is the minimum potential to stop the electron from scape the surface, thus the energy associate is eVr. The equation (2) become: eVr = hv - \phi Then we have a linear relationship between the stopping potential Vr and the Frequency. The measurement of the retarding potential oscillated over time so this insert an error in the voltage around 0.02 eV. The equipment that we used gave us directly the energy associated with the Retarding Potential (eVr). In the first set of measurements we didnt used any type of filter, we just select the frequency by the color. The plot Vr_vs_v (seen Fig3) gave us a linear dependence as we expect from the equation (3), thus the angular coefficient provided was 2.8162 10^-15eVs. Thus h = 2.8162 10^-15 this result is ~ 32% less than the expected value [4] for h = 4.14 10^-15 eV. In the second time we used two filters, a yellow and a green. The Retarding Potential decrees about ~30% for the first two measurement (seen Table 2). Than the Linear fit provide us a linear coefficient h = 3.776 10^-15 +/- 0.108 10^-15, it is 9% less than the real value. In the same equation we can find the Work Function for the photocell. The equation (3) says that the constant tern is the Work Function, from the linear fit with filter we found \phi = 1.354 eV. Now that we have the equation we can find the cutoff frequency $\nu_{0}$ by putting the $k_{max} = 0 $ we have \nu_{0} = frac {\varphi}{h} where we found $ \nu_{0} = 358 e^{12} Hz$. The measurement with filter was noticeably better than with no filter, the reason is in the the way we separated the frequencies is not perfect, thats why when we add the filter the Stopping Potential dropped almost $30\%$. With the filter the energy

due the frequency, is more precisely the one we assumed (Table 1) that was the true value, where we used to make the plot. CONCLUSION The astonishing thing of this experiment is that we could observer the two types of behave of the wave-particle duality, where when the light passed through the grid acts like wave (interference and diffraction) and when it hit the metal surface the photoelectric effect occurs, the light act like a particle. Because of the limitation of the experiment apparatus we werent able to directly observe some fact of the photoelectric effect. We used kind of black box, we knew how it works but we couldnt change the current and set by ourselves the stop potential. Instead we assumed that the photoelectron detector does work as we expected, thus we were able to get the Planks constant h = 3.776 10^-15 +/- 0.108 10^-15, with a reasonable accuracy (~9% less then the real value). I think the main reason for this shift is because we did have filters for the other colors, because as we add the filter the Retarding Potential dropped significantly, if we keep doing this for the other frequencies all values will (probably) drop to, so the slop of the fit will increase, therefore the Planks constant will rise, getting close to the existent value. ABSTRACT We were able to test the Einstein theory of the photoelectric effect, where the maximum Kinetic energy depends (linearly) on the frequency of the light and the surface material (Work Function), and saw the wave-particle duality behave of the light. Using Mercury lamp where this light pass through a diffraction grid that separate the spectrum, we determined the retarding Potential for each frequency, with and without filters. Using the filter we get a better agreement for the Planks constant h = 3.776 10^-15 +/- 0.108 10^-15, with a reasonable accuracy (~9% less then the real value). Tern