What would vs be for waves?
In a classical wave picture, the vs graph would look quite different. First of all, in a classical wave picture there would be no threshold frequency. Actual photoelectric observations show that below some frequency , you get no current at all. In a wave picture, that would not happen: in this picture one imagines waves wiggling an electron and continually transferring energy to it; if waves are allowed to wiggle it long enough, eventually the electron will gain enough energy to fly off. So in the wave picture, you would get current (and non-zero ) even at low frequency. In the wave picture, we expect maximum energy to depend on intensity, which depends on , the electric field amplitude (the higher the field, the harder the electrons are wiggled, and the higher the energy they get kicked away with). In fact the vs function is completely independent of intensity, consistent with the particle picture. In the particle picture, the maximum electron energy should depend only on the energy o
