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Article: Just thanck Planck; Quantum theory's centenary.(Science and Technology)(Quantum theory is about to celebrate its centenary)(Max Planck)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 9, 2000
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ONE hundred years ago this month, a light-bulb lit up over a physicist's head-and he wondered what made it yellow. For, while the yellow colour of a bulb suggests that it is giving off most of its light at that easily visible frequency, the physics he had been taught predicted that a heated object should emit mostly shorter-wavelength radiation, which is invisible. Max Planck presented his explanation for this troubling observation, known as the black-body radiation problem, in a lecture to the German Physical Society in Berlin on December 14th 1900. And that was when the light-bulbs really started going off over the heads of physicists across the world. For to solve his ...