Do others approve of the following answers? Perhaps they are merely elliptical. Correct but not explicit.
Can anyone clarify the assertion that there is no unit value for the minimum transferable quantum of energy,...?
There is no minimum amount of transferable energy.
(here, it seems to me, that this "amount" is set by Planck's constant and is the photon's innate value, which, however, perhaps can never be taken as a single object counted up alongside other objects, I suppose here there is some recondite attack on the word "energy")
... which I take to be a photon?
A photon is a physical object, not a unit of energy.
(here I wonder if this answer implies an assertion as to an understanding of the nature of the photon that is not generally admitted [the Gauge boson page on Wikipedia speaks of a virtual particle)
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My understanding is that the quantum, the quantum of light and so the photon, was the consequent value of the black body, and so the black-body radiation analysis of Planck, experiment as it arrives to answer for the ultra violet catastrophe (for the distribution of what I will call, perhaps arbitrarily, pure energy, within kinetic heat or motion, within the spectrum at its higher levels). It is the minimum amount of work doing energy that can be absorbed and emitted. Wiktionary gives this definition of Energy. (physics) A quantity that denotes the ability to do work and is measured in a unit dimensioned in mass × distance²/time² (ML²/T²) or the equivalent.
If the photon is without mass it seems to be sensible to call it pure energy, as pure as can be. Einstein thought that nobody understood the photon and so he said "those who think they understand it are actually mistaken." Is it that people consider it meaningful & proper to, unproblematically, class the so called photon as a "physical object?" I understand physicists to think light, without defining it as matter, in terms of probability packets, so that as is often said, the formulas work but at the level of common sense there is no real intelligibility concerning the light quantum or, as it were, light itself.
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Also in regard to my original statement, at the top of the thread "It strikes me that if one can speak of this quantum in terms of area, that there are smaller bits in a state of useless entropy that are bellow the threshold of what can be agglomerated in such a way so as to do effectual work." Can anyone point me to good information about the notion of what is going on bellow the threshold of Plank's constant? The best information I have been able to garner so far (thanks to"mathematic's" helpful response) regarding this inquiry, is found here @ http://en.wikipedia..../Planck_length. Of course it is a Wikipedia article and so not fully trustworthy and also somewhat scanted. The most important lead seems to come from the statement that "the Planck length is the length scale at which the structure of spacetime becomes dominated by quantum effects" and so signals the importance of the quantum effect which brings one to, amongst other things, the popular realm of quantum teleportation and the the 'delayed choice' experiments - but so far my fundamental question about quantum entropy remains quite obscure.
