Work functions:

Albert Einstein, extending earlier ideas of Max Planck, proposed that the energy of radiation was in discrete packets, or QUANTA. Each packet of light energy is called a PHOTON. It is recognIsed as a fundamental particle of matter/energy, with zero mass and zero charge. According to Planck, the energy of the photon is proportional to the frequency of the radiation, i.e.:

where h, Planck's constant, has the value of 6.6 x 10-34 J.s, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum, with a value of 3.0 x 108 m.s-1. When a photon strikes the surface of a metal, it is either reflected with no loss of energy, or it transfers ALL its energy to a surface electron. Some of this energy is required to simply release the electron from the metal's surface, the rest being imparted to the electron as kinetic energy. Einstein's PHOTOELECTRIC EQUATION states that:

where me is the mass of the electron, hf is the energy of the incident photon, and w0 is the WORK FUNCTION of the metal. w0 is the MINIMUM ENERGY that is required in order to release an electron from a given metal's surface. It follows that for a specific metal, there will be a THRESHOLD FREQUENCY, f0 such that f0 = w0/h. Below this frequncey, light will not cause a photoelectric effect with the given metal. The threshold frequency corresponds to a wavelength 0 = w0/hc Referring to Einstein's photoelectric equation, the kinetic energy, Ek = mev2, of the emitted electron is given by the difference in the energy of the photon of the exciting radiation and the work function.