Shockig World of Quantum Physics
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The Shocking World of Quantum Physics
In this essay I will try to outline some of the basic ideas of quantum physics and I will examine some of the more puzzling, if not shocking concepts they are based on.
At the end of the 19th century physicists believed that most of the fundamental laws of physics had been worked out, and expected these to only need minor refinements. These beliefs were, however, quashed by Einstein's discovery of relativity and through the development of quantum physics in the early 20th century. The development of quantum mechanics was initially motivated by two observations, which demonstrated the flaws of classical physics. These were the "ultraviolet catastrophe" and the photoelectric effect.
The "ultraviolet catastrophe" is concerned with black bodies, which are theoretical objects, which absorb and emit all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Classical physics can be used to derive an equation, which describes the intensity of black body radiation as a function of frequency for a fixed temperature, the result being the Rayleigh- Jeans law. However, this law is flawed for high frequencies as the intensity tends to infinity as the wavelength tends to zero, and an infinite intensity cannot exist. This is called the "ultraviolet catastrophe". Planck explained this black body radiation by proposing that atoms of a material emit energy in quantized bundles which are equal to the product of frequency and the constant 'h' (Planck's Constant)...