Energy, a core concept in physics, was initially defined in matter terms as the ability to do work, which was moving matter, defined as the force times the distance moved. Energy then lets us move matter by work, and work transfers energy to the moving object as kinetic energy. Energy is then stored work, and work is the transfer energy. For example, energy lets us throw a ball, which is work, as it transfers energy to the ball, that might hit a lever to do more work, etc. That energy allows work, and that work transfers energy, successfully explained how engines operate.
This defined energy in matter terms, but what about waves? Last century, scientists knew that a water wave’s energy increased as its frequency squared, so doubling the frequency quadrupled the energy. Light was seen as a wave so it was expected to be the same, but this predicted that furnaces emitting light of many frequencies should increase them all as they got hotter, but in practice they didn’t. Hot furnaces didn’t give off lethal doses of x-rays and kill their workers, so physicists called it the ultraviolet catastrophe because to them, it was a disaster that physical laws didn’t apply. Planck then solved the problem by assuming that atoms emit light energy in multiples of a basic amount, later called Planck’s constant, giving the equation:
Light Energy = Plank’s constant x Frequency
That the energy of light varied directly with frequency, not its square, then predicted the observed radiation. It also made Planck’s constant the smallest possible unit of energy. Einstein later confirmed that light comes in photon packets based on the photo-electric effect, but why light waves come in little indivisible units called photons remains a mystery of physics to this day.
What then is energy in processing terms? If the fundamental process of the quantum network is a Planck process, short wavelength light is that process divided over fewer points, so each gets a bigger share, to complete the process faster. In contrast, long wavelength light is that process divided over more points, so each gets a smaller share, to complete the process slower. If energy is the rate of processing transfer, then Planck’s equation can be derived from first principles (Note 1). Hence, Plank’s constant is the smallest possible energy transfer because one Planck process is the smallest possible processing transfer.
Light then comes in little packets because each photon represents a fundamental quantum network process. that no activity can be less than. Photons are the indivisible units of our reality because the processing that generates them is indivisible. Nothing less than a photon can exist in the physical world because nothing less than a Planck process can exist in the quantum world. Even so, this one process produces the entire electro-magnetic spectrum by distributing itself more or less.
Water waves seem continuous but quantum waves aren’t. Each photon is a Planck process divided over a finite wave length, so it can’t increase or decrease by less than a point. One less point increases the energy by making the remaining points run the same process faster, to transfer it faster. As the wavelength reduces, higher energies are harder to come by, because removing one point from a few points increases the energy more. The ultraviolet catastrophe didn’t happen because heating a furnace doesn’t produce as many high frequencies.
But if every photon is the same process, divided more or less, why does the energy of light increase with frequency? If every photon is the same amount of processing, that makes the same dot on a screen, shouldn’t it transfer the same amount of energy? It does but high frequency light has more energy because it delivers more photons per second. Increasing the frequency of light doesn’t increase the energy per photon, just the number of photons arriving. An X-ray photon has the same energy as a radio-wave photon, but X-rays deliver more photons per second. This explains why the energy of light varies linearly with frequency, as Planck’s equation describes, not as the square of its frequency, as it would if each photon wave changed its energy with frequency.
Note 1. Let one photon be a Planck process divided over the points of its wavelength, and the constant h represent that process as a quantum network transfer. Let energy E be the processing transfer rate at a point and l be the number of points in the photon wavelength. Every photon is then one Planck process divided between l points, so the processing transfer rate at a point E = h/l. If f is the number of network cycles each point takes to run a Planck process that one point can complete in one cycle, then f = 1/l. The equation E = h.f then follows, where E, h, and f are defined in quantum units. Converting these units to per second terms then gives E = h.f, which is Planck’s equation. Plank’s constant then represents the transfer of one Planck process.