The advent of Quantum Mechanics

Hi guys. First of all a little introduction about me and what the article is about, I am a student of
BSCS and i am currently in my 3rd semester. The article is about a field of Physics that has
been rapidly gaining ground and has the potential to revolutionize the world of science. The
article is aimed at guys who want to get a better understanding of what its all about. The topic is
a little big so Ill probably split it into 2 or 3 articles or else itll get messed up. You can also find
these articles at a gaming forum ( although it's much more than that) which was made to give a
platform to all the gamers living in our country to discuss about games, technology, education
help etc. My username there is Eternal Blizzard [1]
Keep in mind though that there isnt going to be any high level mathematics or any kind of high
level technical talk involved as it's intended for laymen from a layman. If you think anything is
wrong feel free to point out. I am still learning.
All right so lets get started. Rather than directly jumping into the modern quantum theory lets
start with how it actually came into being because I think before understanding that you have to
understand some of the key concepts and problems that led scientists to think differently and
abandon their classical approach (By classical I mean Newtonian mechanics, physics involving
macroscopic objects). There were 2 very tedious problems whose solutions gave an idea about
Quantum mechanics. These were the Photoelectric effect and Blackbody radiation. Ill
discuss Black Body radiation in a little detail and then just blast through some of the famous
events leading to the formation of quantum mechanics.
So around the mid 1800s scientists were trying to study the radiation that comes out of a body
having temperature greater than absolute zero (0 Kelvin). This is known as thermal radiation
and comes due to the collision between atoms/molecules. If the temperature is high enough it
also comes due to electrons which get excited and emit radiation on their way back to ground
state. Firstly they tried to measure the radiation coming out of ordinary materials like metals.
You know, metals glow when they are hot, red hot, heat it more and it becomes white hot. But
then they thought that since light also reflects from the surface of those materials, itd get mixed
with the thermal radiation and the results would be inaccurate. Gustav Kirchhoff then came up
with the idea of a Black Body thatll absorb all the light striking on it in 1860. Thus if one
measures the radiation coming out of the black body itd be purely thermal radiation as light isnt
interfering with the results anymore. Now a perfect black body is ideal but one could get close
by taking a metallic box with a very small hole in it. The light that passed through the hole will
have very little chance of escaping the box as it will keep reflecting inside and will eventually get
absorbed.

Now if we measure the radiation coming out of the hole, thatd be pure thermal radiation or I
should say almost pure. Now the main problem arose when few laws were given regarding the
relation between the intensity of the radiation and the frequency/wavelength at different
temperatures. According to these laws as we increase the temperature the frequency of the
oscillating atoms or molecules gets higher and higher and as frequency gets higher and higher
the wavelength of the emitting radiation gets lower and lower and the smaller the wavelength,
the larger the intensity thus leading to an infinite amount of energy being radiated as shown in
the graph (the black curve).
Now if we measure the radiation coming out of the hole, thatd be pure thermal radiation or I
should say almost pure. Now the main problem arose when few laws were given regarding the
relation between the intensity of the radiation and the frequency/wavelength at different
temperatures. According to these laws as we increase the temperature the frequency of the
oscillating atoms or molecules gets higher and higher and as frequency gets higher and higher
the wavelength of the emitting radiation gets lower and lower and the smaller the wavelength,
the larger the intensity thus leading to an infinite amount of energy being radiated as shown in
the graph (the black curve).

In simple words itd become something like a short range flamethrower emitting flames you cant
see and capable of melting your body if you bring it close to that hole emitting all the radiations

Practically this doesnt happen. In reality, the graph follows those blue/green/red lines.
What happens is that after reaching a certain frequency, intensity starts diminishing and tends to
zero. Reason? Ask Max Planck.

In 1900s Max Planck came upon the idea that energy is absorbed or radiated in discrete
quantities i.e. in packets rather than continuously. He gave the famous relation

Max Planck couldnt actually give the whole explanation as to what it meant. He was just
successful in finding a mathematical relation which followed the actual results. i.e. when they
plugged in shorter wavelengths the relation tended to zero instead of going infinite. What
actually happens is that after a certain frequency is reached the energy required to excite them
and give off high energy radiation couldnt be provided by just heating them no matter how long

because atoms will absorb energy in discrete quantities. Their frequencies have reached a
certain peak point which requires a far greater amount of energy i.e. minimum energy for
excitation is hv, where 'v' (read "nu") is the frequency at which they are oscillating. This energy
cannot be provided by heating them. Hence after that peak point thered be no radiation and
thus the intensity tends to zero.
If you cant picture it right, this is the best I example I can give to dumb it down even more.
Think of something like this. The box is put in a furnace. Suppose the furnace is on a fixed but
very high temperature and contains packets of energy according to that temperature. Suppose
the packet sizes range from 1 100. Now when the box is just put in the furnace the frequency
of the oscillation of atoms is very low so they may require a packet of size 10 maybe. Now
suppose they absorbed it and emit radiation, frequency rises, now they require packets of size
30. They absorb it and again release radiation. Keep in mind they can absorb in integral
multiples, i.e. if an atom requires a packet of 10 it can absorb a packet of size 20,30,40 (integral
multiples) but not 15.This process goes on and on until they reach a frequency that requires a
packet size of 110 suppose. Now there arent any packets of size 110 so they wont absorb any
packet and thus wont emit any radiation. Now the energy needed by atoms is too high that you
cant provide by just heating them. You are gonna say, well just increase the temperature, well
that works but only up to a certain limit. After that you cant provide higher energy packets.
Classical physics thought that atoms will absorb energy continuously, i.e. From our previous
example if an atom needed a packet of 10, it could do something like absorb 2 packets of size 5
and thus continuously increase their frequency and that was the problem, though the concept of
packets wasnt established till Max Planck. They thought of it as waves. Since waves are
continuous itd be possible to continuously absorb energy. Keep in mind that at that time the
wave theory of light was approved and particle nature of light was not considered. Later in 1905
Einstein (PRAISE THE LORD) used Plancks relation and solved the problem of the
Photoelectric effect and asserted that light sometimes behaved as particles and called them
light quantum or light packets and from there on the particle nature of light that was sulking in a
dark corner was once again brought to light. Too bad Newton was dead or he would have kissed
Planck and Einstein (for those who dont understand, Newtons corpuscular theory of light was
forgotten after Young proved wave nature through interference and Maxwell regarded light as
Electromagnetic Radiation)
However this is still the old quantum theory. Electrons were still considered to move around in
orbits and this idea was posing some problems until the mid 1920s when Louis de Broglie came
up with a totally absurd idea in his PhD thesis. He said if light or more generally waves can be
considered as particles why not consider particles as waves too? It was rejected at first ... but
Einstein supported it and later experiments proved it and thus it was accepted. (de Broglie be

like
told ya..) This led to wave-particle duality. Heisenberg came up with matrix
mechanics in 1925 which was the first form of modern quantum mechanics. Later in 1926 Erwin
Schrodinger published wave mechanics and his famous wave equation and a lot of physicists
sided with it instead of matrix mechanics because visualizing waves was easy rather than

matrices. However Schrodinger later proved that both were actually the same thing and were
correct. We wont go into much detail of this later on but it is worth mentioning (even I dont
know how this work.) Later in 1927 Heisenberg came up with his Uncertainty Principle which
stated that you cant measure simultaneously the momentum and the position of a particle. The
more accurately you measure one the more spread (variance) you get in the other. From then
on was the actual start and many quantum theories were given.
Hope you guys enjoyed it and see you in the next article.

References
[1] You can find all my articles in this section. (Username is Eternal Blizzard)
http://www.pakgamers.com/forums/f84/