Wave-Particle Duality Publicized early in the debate about whether light was composed of particles or waves, a wave-particle dual nature soon was found to be characteristic of electrons as well. The evidence for the description of light as waves was well established at the turn of the century when the photoelectric effect introduced firm evidence of a particle nature as well. On the other hand, the particle properties of electrons was well documented when the DeBroglie hypothesis and the subsequent experiments by Davisson and Germer established the wave nature of the electron. Photoelectric Effect Analysis of data from the photoelectric experiment showed that the energy of the ejected electrons was proportional to the frequency of the illuminating light. This showed that whatever was knocking the electrons out had an energy proportional to light frequency. The remarkable fact that the ejection energy was independent of the total energy of illumination showed that the interaction must be like that of a particle which gave all of its energy to the electron! This fit in well with Planck's hypothesis that light in the blackbody radiation experiment could exist only in discrete bundles with energy Wave-Particle Duality: Light By the turn of the 20th century, most physicists were convinced by phenomena lke the above that light could be fully described by a wave, with no necessity for invoking a particle nature. But the story was not over.