Archive for December 25, 2009

Una breve historia de la Mecanica Cuantica. A Brief History Of Quantum Mechanics

The history of quantum mechanics began essentially with the 1838 discovery of cathode rays by Michael Faraday, 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 could be discrete, and the 1900 quantum hypothesis by Max Planck that any energy is radiated and absorbed in quantities divisible by discrete energy elements, E, such that each of these energy elements is proportional to the frequency ? with which they each individually radiate energy.

Planck 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.

However, at that time, this appeared not to explain the photoelectric effect (1839), i.e. that shining light on certain materials can function to eject electrons from the material.

In 1905, basing his work on Plancks quantum hypothesis, Albert Einstein postulated that light itself consists of individual quanta. These later came to be called photons (1926). From Einstein’s simple postulation was born a flurry of debating, theorizing and testing, and thus, the entire field of quantum physics.

Quantum mechanics (QM) is a set of principles describing the physical reality at the atomic level of matter (molecules and atoms) and the subatomic (electrons, protons, and even smaller particles). These descriptions include the simultaneous wave-like and particle-like behavior of both matter and radiation (“waveparticle duality”).

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