Introduction
In this experiment we will explore the particle nature of light. In particular we will see that scattered photons have less energy than unscattered photons in accordance with the same equations that can be used in classical elastic collisions. In general we will show that this collision conserves both energy and momentum.
Math
To derive the equation necessary to model Compton scattering we will need to use both conservation of energy and momentum. Conservation of momentum shows us that the initial momentum of the incoming photon \(\vec{p_1}\) is equal to the final momentum of the photon \(\vec{p_2}\) plus the momentum of the electron \(\vec{p_e}\) .