Do photons have mass or momentum?
No, photons do not have mass or momentum. In fact, they are massless. This means that mass cannot be added to or subtracted from a photon. Also, the photon does not have a location in space or time. The photon is simply a point of energy. It has no physical properties other than energy, and does not interact with matter or energy except by transferring energy.
Does a photon have momentum?
If you run into a photon it should do no damage. But on the flip side, if you run into an impenetrable wall, you will still be stopped. We can’t measure a photon’s mass or momentum because it has neither. This is because the photon is massless and, therefore, has no rest mass (energy is required to have mass). It also doesn’t have any linear or angular momentum, or any internal energy, because these properties
Does a photon have mass and momentum?
There is one issue: photons are massless. In the popular view, being massless means that a photon has only energy and no mass. But does it really? One argument is that the photon is its own “proper mass”, the rest of the matter in the Universe being outside the photon. This means that a photon doesn’t add to the mass of an object, it subtracts from the energy. This idea is not completely without problems, though. For one
Do photons have momentum without mass?
Is it possible for a particle to have mass but no momentum? The answer is yes. A photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field so it is not a particle in the usual sense. It is the force carrier of the electromagnetic force. Like mass, the photon has energy. This energy allows the photon to transfer momentum. However, to do this, the photon needs to possess an actual location. This means that because a photon has no location, it cannot be assigned a momentum. This is the
Does a photon have mass?
No, a photon does not have mass. A photon is an elementary particle which does not have any internal structure. A photon has no spatial extension; it has no location. A photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field. It is a particle of light. The photon is the force carrier of the electromagnetic force. In other words, the photon is the particle responsible for transferring energy in the form of light.