Albert Einstein

Quantization of Energy (Albert Einstein)

In 1905 Albert Einstein extended Planck's work to the light that had been emitted. At a time when everyone agreed that light was a wave (and therefore continuous), Einstein suggested that it behaved as if it was a stream of small bundles, or packets, of energy.  In other words, light was also quantized.  Einstein's model was based on two assumptions. First, he assumed that light was composed of photons, which are small, discrete bundles of energy. Second, he assumed that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency.

E = h ____

In this equation, h is a constant known as Planck's constant, which is equal to 6.626 x 10^-34 J-s.