User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/introduction to quantum mechanics: Difference between revisions

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[[File:Black body.svg|thumb|upright=1.4|Blackbody radiation intensity vs color and temperature. The rainbow bar represents visible light; 5000K objects are "white hot" by mixing differing colors of visible light. To the right is the invisible infrared. Classical theory (black curve for 5000K) fails; the other curves are correct predicted by quantum theories.]]

Hot objects radiate heat; very hot objects – red hot, white hot objects – all look similar when heated to the same temperature. This temperature dependent "look" results from a common curve of light intensity at different frequencies (colors). The common curve is called blackbody radiation. The lowest frequencies are invisible heat rays – infrared light. White hot objects have intensity across many colors in the visible range. Continuous wave theories of light and matter cannot explain the blackbody radiation curve. Planck spread the heat energy among individual "oscillators" of an undefined character but with discrete energy capacity: the blackbody radiation behavior was then correctpredicted by this model.

At the time, electrons, atoms, and discrete oscillators were all exotic ideas to explain exotic phenomena. But in 1905 [[Albert Einstein]] proposed that light was also corpuscular, consisting of "energy quanta", seemingly in contradiction to the established science of light as a continuous wave, stretching back a hundred years to [[Thomas Young]]'s work on [[diffraction]].