How can electrons absorb photons? Surely the electrons and photons are so tiny, and the amount of space between them

Question: How can electrons absorb photons? Surely the electrons and photons are so tiny, and the amount of space between them is so great in relation, that the chance of an electron being on a direct collision course with a photon is tiny?
- Keywords:
  absorb,
  electron,
  photon,
  photons
Asked by strangeness to Arttu, Ceri, James_M, Monica, Philip on 19 Jun 2011.
- James M Monk answered on 19 Jun 2011:
  
  This is a good question, and it gets to the heart of quantum mechanics. The electron and the photon are not in any one specific place, they have a probability to be at any place (or time, for that matter). So to work out the probability that the photon and electron interact, you effectively have to add up the probabilities for all of the different ways in which they could both be in the same place.

strangeness commented on 24 Jun 2011:

Thank you for your answer!

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Question: How can electrons absorb photons? Surely the electrons and photons are so tiny, and the amount of space between them is so great in relation, that the chance of an electron being on a direct collision course with a photon is tiny?