After the Curtis-Shapley Debates, the macro universe had been defined as a grouping of island universes. The island universes, or galaxies, were constructed of stars. And among those stars were the Sun and its planets. And diving down into these planets, we find ourselves on Earth, which contained an active ecosystem constructed of land, air, and life all interconnected to each other. That was the picture around the time of these debates. But other observations were being made, observations that indicated a micro world underneath all matter. The observations were of particles making sinuous trails in the clouds; light being dispersed in component colors; and electronic jumps caused by light shining on metal. This suggested a world of components, of quanta. And this made all the difference in our world view; that the small affects the large. After reading “Quantum Behavior” in Six Easy Pieces (R. Feynman; 1995; Helix Books, pgs. 115 – 138); comment on the world view before and after the development of quantum theory.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Professor Howard Astronomy Musings 
There is a lot of experiments and new knowledge able to be found out because of atomic theory. Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but it was then discovered it behaves like a wave. Later because of atomic theory, it was found that Newton was not completely wrong. It was discovered that light does indeed behave like a particle sometimes. Now it is known that light can behave like both a particle and a wave. This is much like how historically the electron was thought to behave like a particle but then was found to behave like a wave.
Before atomic theory, there was no knowledge about waves, therefore no experiments. Because of atomic theory experiments with waves were able to be conducted. For example, first you start out with shallow water and an object with a motor mocking waves. To the right, there are two walls, one being the absorber, to prevent reflection. Then a beach is created with a detector that measures intensity and something to measure the height. When there is motion at the source, there is more intensity at the detector. Sometimes, two waves arrive at the detector, and in that case, the resulting wave motion would be the difference of the two amplitudes,
Before atomic theory, matter was thought to be able to be divided into any small quantity, but now we know that we cant. There was an experiment conducted dealing with matter and event probability was concluded. There was an experiment done that had to do with an electron leaving a gun and from that there were three things that were concluded. The first thing is that the probability of an event in an experiment is given by the square of the absolute value of a complex number. Second it was found that when an event can occur in several alternative ways, the probability amplitudes for each way considered separately. The last thing concluded was if an experiment is preformed which is capable of determining whether one or another alternative is actually taken, the probability is the vent is the sum of the probabilities for each alternative. The machinery behind this is not yet known, but will be better understood in discoveries to come.
First what is quantum physics/ mechanics? It has to do with electrons and photons. Some people that have contributed to this theory are Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and Bohr. First Schrodinger, he invented the “wave equation” for particles which is used to see the probability of particles releasing energy. Second Heisenberg, he came up with the “uncertainty principle”. Lastly Bohr, he realized what electron actually do.
Without quantum physics no one would understand matter and how to make new things and technological advances. Some examples from the reading are experiments that they have done. For example, when they do an experiment with bullets. They come to a conclusion that there is no interference.
After quantum physics we are able to know the probability of something happening. We could do things according to estimations. The world is changed because of this, we are able to make decisions based on the information we find out when it comes to quantum physics.