Particles in Physics are essentially of two types:

• Bosons
• Fermions

Fermions are thought to be particles, that best approximate the intuitive understanding of ‘matter’.

Bosons are harder to understand, because they’re thought to be particles that actually translate a force.

Hence, an Electron is both a Fermion and a Lepton, while a Photon is clearly a Boson.

One of the facts which we know about Electromagnetic Radiation, is that at its longest wavelengths, and thus at its lowest frequencies, it resembles waves the most, while at its shortest wavelengths it strongly resembles particles, and its frequencies are even disregarded.

And so an idle question which some people might ponder, is when given the longest-wavelength form of EM Radiation: Radio-Frequency Waves, how could wave / particle duality still hold? The short answer which I’d have to that question would be, ‘In the photons having a ridiculously high number.’ The energy of one photon is inversely proportional to its wavelength. The wavelengths of visible light range from 400 to 700 nanometers. At the same time, its photon energy is close to 1.2 eV.

I leave it to the reader to compute, if he is operating a shortwave transmitter with a wavelength of 10 meters, what the corresponding photon energy would be ! In any case, practical RF transmitters radiate anywhere from 5 to 5000 Watts. If the effective number of resulting photons is to be computed, then the fact must also be accounted for, that an Ampere-Second is a Coulomb of charge. This will tell us, how many Joules of energy, 1 eV is.

1 J = 1 C ⋅ V = 1 W ⋅ S .

Further, if Electromagnetic Phenomena become very low-frequency, or even D.C. Phenomena, then their photons are thought to take the form of virtual particles.

Dirk