The easy answer is that is always behaves at both. The particle nature become prominent in single photon interactions and in some optoelectronic devices. Photons have momentum, but no mass. Think about that one! That seems impossible, but in fact NASA is looking at using light for propulsion. Researchers have also made optical tweasers that move particles around. In all of my work, I treat light as a wave. I am looking at how it propagates and diffracts around structures. When light is actually interacting with matter, the particle nature becomes more important,.
It is hard to answer this question succinctly, since this is a fairly large topic. If you have a few minutes, I suggest reading this: http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm (pages 1 to 7). That is a fairly good write-up on the topic of light duality.
The easy answer is that is always behaves at both. The particle nature become prominent in single photon interactions and in some optoelectronic devices. Photons have momentum, but no mass. Think about that one! That seems impossible, but in fact NASA is looking at using light for propulsion. Researchers have also made optical tweasers that move particles around. In all of my work, I treat light as a wave. I am looking at how it propagates and diffracts around structures. When light is actually interacting with matter, the particle nature becomes more important,.
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