Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. When you think of Albert Einstein, what do you think of?

When light hits a material, electrons can be released from this material—the photoelectric effect. Although this effect played a major role in the development of the quantum theory, it still holds a ...

The photoelectric effect refers to what happens when electrons are emitted from a material that has absorbed electromagnetic radiation. Physicist Albert Einstein was the first to describe the effect ...

In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that the photoelectric effect—the ability of metals to produce an electric current when exposed to light—could be explained if light is quantum, traveling in discrete ...

I took a deep dive into the photoelectric effect — where light hits a surface and kicks electrons out. It’s simple, mind-blowing, and totally changed how we understand energy and matter. Here’s how it ...

Almost a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein won a Nobel Prize for his research on the phenomenon. The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, ...

According to quantum mechanics, our universe is like a Lego set. All matter particles, as well as particles such as light that act as messengers between them, come in discrete blocks of energy. By ...

Albert Einstein never won a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity—in fact, it was only through long, political jockeying within the Nobel committee that he won the prize at all. Instead, when he ...