Max Planck

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Max Planck

Planck in 1933

Born

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck April 23, 1858 Kiel, Duchy of Holstein

Died

October 4, 1947 (aged 89) Gttingen, Lower Saxony,Germany

Nationality

German

Fields

Physics

Institutions

University of Kiel University of Berlin University of Gttingen Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft

Alma mater

Ludwig Maximilian University of

Munich Doctoral advisor

Alexander von Brill

Doctoral students

Gustav Ludwig Hertz Erich Kretschmann Walther Meissner Walter Schottky Max von Laue Max Abraham Moritz Schlick Walther Bothe Julius Edgar Lilienfeld

Other notable students

Lise Meitner

Known for

Planck constant Planck postulate Planck's law of black body radiation

Notable awards

Nobel Prize in Physics (1918) Goethe Prize (1945)

Spouse

Marie Merck (18871909) Marga von Hsslin (19111947)

Signature

Notes His son Erwin Planck was executed in 1945 by the Gestapo for his part in the assassination attempt of Adolph Hitler July 20 plot.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, FRS[1] (April 23, 1858 October 4, 1947) was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.[2] Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily on his role as originator of the quantum theory. This theory revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einsteins theory of relativity revolutionized the understanding of space and time. Together they constitute the fundamental theories of 20th-century physics.
Contents [hide]

1 Early life and career o o o o o o o o o 1.1 Academic career 1.2 Family 1.3 Professor at Berlin University 1.4 Black-body radiation 1.5 Einstein and the theory of relativity 1.6 World War I 1.7 Post War and Weimar Republic 1.8 Quantum mechanics 1.9 Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War

2 Religious views 3 Honors and awards 4 Publications 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography 8 External links

Early life and career[edit]

Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Gttingen; his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich.

Max Planck's signature at ten years of age.

Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptised with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx (a now obsolete variant of Markus or maybe simply an error for Max, which is actually short for Maximilian) was indicated as theprimary name.[3] However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.[4] He was the 6th child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian andAustrian troops into Kiel during the Second Schleswig War in 1864. In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Mller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Mller that Planck first

learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17.[5] This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics. Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.

Planck as a young man, 1878

The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes."[6] Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, but only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and so began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.[when?] In 1877 he went to Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose heat theory as his field. In October 1878 Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation, ber den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wrmetheorie (On the second law of thermodynamics). He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his former school in Munich. In June 1880, he presented his habilitation thesis, Gleichgewichtszustnde isotroper Krper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures).

Academic career[edit]
With the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid private lecturer in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work. In April 1885 the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, esp

Quantum mechanics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For a generally accessible and less technical introduction to the topic, see Introduction to quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics

Uncertainty principle

Introduction Glossary History

Background[show]

Fundamental concepts[show]

Experiments[show]

Formulations[show]

Equations[show]

Interpretations[show]

Advanced topics[show]

Scientists[show]

V T E

Quantum mechanics (QM also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena at nanoscopic scales where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic and subatomic length scales. Quantum mechanics provides a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like andwavelike behavior and interactions of energy and matter. Quantum mechanics provides a substantially useful framework for many features of the modern periodic table of

elements including the behavior of atoms during chemical bonding and has played a significant role in the development of many modern technologies. In advanced topics of quantum mechanics, some of these behaviors are macroscopic (see macroscopic quantum phenomena) and emerge at only extreme (i.e., very low or very high) energies or temperatures (such as in the use of superconducting magnets). For example, the angular momentum of an electron bound to an atom or molecule is quantized. In contrast, the angular momentum of an unbound electron is not quantized. In the context of quantum mechanics, the waveparticle duality of energy and matter and the uncertainty principle provide a unified view of the behavior of photons, electrons, and other atomic-scale objects. The mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics are abstract. A mathematical function, the wavefunction, provides information about the probability amplitude of position, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle. Mathematical manipulations of the wavefunction usually involve braket notation which requires an understanding of complex numbers and linear functionals. The wavefunction formulation treats the particle as a quantum harmonic oscillator, and the mathematics is akin to that describing acoustic resonance. Many of the results of quantum mechanics are not easily visualized in terms of classical mechanics. For instance, in a quantum mechanical model the lowest energy state of a system, the ground state, is non-zero as opposed to a more "traditional" ground state with zero kinetic energy (all particles at rest). Instead of a traditional static, unchanging zero energy state, quantum mechanics allows for far more dynamic, chaotic possibilities, according to John Wheeler. The earliest versions of quantum mechanics were formulated in the first decade of the 20th century. About this time, the atomic theory and the corpuscular theory of light (as updated by Einstein)[1] first came to be widely accepted as scientific fact; these latter theories can be viewed as quantum theories of matter and electromagnetic radiation, respectively. Early quantum theory was significantly reformulated in the mid-1920s by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan, (matrix mechanics); Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrdinger (wave mechanics); and Wolfgang Pauli and Satyendra Nath Bose (statistics of subatomic particles). Moreover, the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr became widely accepted. By 1930, quantum mechanics had been further unified and formalized by the work of David Hilbert, Paul Dirac and John von Neumann[2] with a greater emphasis placed on measurement in quantum mechanics, the statistical nature of our knowledge of reality, and philosophical speculation about the role of the observer. Quantum mechanics has since permeated throughout many aspects of 20th-century physics and other disciplines including quantum chemistry, quantum electronics, quantum optics, and quantum information science. Much 19th-century physics has been re-evaluated as the "classical limit" of quantum mechanics and its more advanced developments in terms of quantum field theory, string theory, and speculative quantum gravity theories. The name quantum mechanics derives from the observation that some physical quantities can change only in discrete amounts (Latin quanta), and not in a continuous (cf. analog) way.
Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Mathematical formulations 3 Mathematically equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics 4 Interactions with other scientific theories o o 4.1 Quantum mechanics and classical physics 4.2 Relativity and quantum mechanics

4.3 Attempts at a unified field theory

5 Philosophical implications 6 Applications 7 Examples o o o o o o 7.1 Free particle 7.2 Step potential 7.3 Rectangular potential barrier 7.4 Particle in a box 7.5 Finite potential well 7.6 Harmonic oscillator

8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links

History[edit]
Modern physics

Schrdinger equation

History of modern physics

Founders[show]

Branches[show]

Scientists[show]

V T E

Main article: History of quantum mechanics Scientific inquiry into the wave nature of light began in the 17th and 18th centuries when scientists such as Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens and Leonhard Euler proposed a wave theory of light based on experimental observations.[3] In 1803, Thomas Young, an English polymath, performed the famous double-slit experiment that he later described in a

paper entitled "On the nature of light and colours". This experiment played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light. In 1838, with the discovery of cathode rays by Michael Faraday, these studies were followed by the 1859 statement of the black-body radiation problem by Gustav Kirchhoff, the 1877 suggestion by Ludwig Boltzmann that the energy states of a physical system can be discrete, and the 1900 quantum hypothesis of Max Planck.[4] Planck's hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete "quanta" (or "energy elements") precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. In 1896, Wilhelm Wien empirically determined a distribution law of black-body radiation,[5] known as Wien's law in his honor. Ludwig Boltzmann independently arrived at this result by considerations ofMaxwell's equations. However, it was valid only at high frequencies, and underestimated the radiance at low frequencies. Later, Max Planck corrected this model using Boltzmann statistical interpretation of thermodynamics and proposed what is now called Planck's law, which led to the development of quantum mechanics. Among the first to study quantum phenomena in nature were Arthur Compton, C.V. Raman, Pieter Zeeman, each of whom has a quantum effect named after him. Robert A. Millikan studied the Photoelectric effect experimentally and Albert Einstein developed a theory for it. At the same time Niels Bohr developed his theory of the atomic structure which was later confirmed by the experiments of Henry Moseley. In 1913, Peter Debye extended Niels Bohr's theory of atomic structure, introducing elliptical orbits, a concept also introduced by Arnold Sommerfeld.[6] This phase is known as Old quantum theory. According to Planck, each energy element, E, is proportional to its frequency, :

Max Planck is considered the father of the Quantum Theory

where h is Planck's constant. Planck (cautiously) insisted that this was simply an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and had nothing to do with the physical reality of the radiation itself.[7] In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right answer rather than a sizeable discovery.[citation needed] However, in 1905 Albert Einstein interpreted Planck's quantum hypothesis realistically and used it to explain the photoelectric effect in which shining light on certain materials can eject electrons from the material.

The 1927 Solvay Conference inBrussels.

The foundations of quantum mechanics were established during the first half of the 20th century by Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Arthur Compton, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrdinger, Max Born, John von Neumann, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, Wolfgang Pauli, Max von Laue, Freeman Dyson, David Hilbert,Wilhelm Wien, Satyendra Nath Bose, Arnold Sommerfeld and others. In the mid-192