What is the effect of increasing the wavelength of incident light on the photoelectric current?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
What is the effect of increasing the wavelength of incident light on the photoelectric current?
It increases the current
It decreases the current
It has no effect
It stops the current
Increasing the wavelength decreases the frequency, which may fall below the threshold frequency, thus decreasing or stopping the current.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: What is the effect of increasing the wavelength of incident light on the photoelectric current?
Solution: Increasing the wavelength decreases the frequency, which may fall below the threshold frequency, thus decreasing or stopping the current.
Steps: 5
Step 1: Understand that light can be described by its wavelength and frequency. Wavelength is the distance between two peaks of a wave, while frequency is how many waves pass a point in one second.
Step 2: Know that the frequency of light is inversely related to its wavelength. This means that if you increase the wavelength, the frequency decreases.
Step 3: Learn about the threshold frequency, which is the minimum frequency of light needed to release electrons from a material in the photoelectric effect.
Step 4: If the frequency of the incident light decreases (due to an increase in wavelength) and falls below the threshold frequency, electrons cannot be released from the material.
Step 5: When electrons are not released, there will be no flow of electric current, or the photoelectric current will decrease significantly.
