On Jun 2, 6:39*am, K1TTT wrote:
On Jun 2, 10:33*am, Keith Dysart wrote:

On Jun 1, 11:31*pm, Cecil Moore wrote:

"... All of the photon energy present in these waves must

I suggest that you immediately dump any reference that includes
a phrase like "photon energy present in a wave".

There is a wave theory of light, and there is a particle theory
of light, and these two theories do not play well together.

While in many situations they will yield the same answers, it
is not permissible to mix the concepts from each. Distrust
the conclusions of any exposition which does so.

...Keith

agreed. *photons are good when working with other elementary particle
interactions to represent the em energy lost or transferred during
particle interactions. *they are not that useful when studying wave
propagation or interaction with macroscopic object... including 1/4
wave coatings.

For those who may be interested, Richard Feynman offers an
introductory
lecture on photons he http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

It illustrates that attempting to compute 1/4 wave coating behaviour
with photons would be extremely tedious, though possible.

On the other hand, at low light levels, where individual photons
become
discrete events, the wave theory becomes completely inadequate.
Fortunately, for practical applications, power levels are much higher
than this and the wave aproach is quite useful.

....Keith