🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <68qrd6$2jb$1@agate.berkeley.edu>, 
columbus@pleides.camb.opengroup.org says...
>
>Coupla things.
>
>First off, classical E&M + plus quantized energy levels ALONE will
>not explain the photo-electric effect, or Planck's black-body formula.
>You need SOME additional hypotheses about the coupling between matter
>and the EM field.  For example, if energy is conserved, then how are
>we to reconcile the abrupt change in the atom's energy level (during an
>absorption or emission event) with Maxwell's equations?  

Why do we need to assume that the energy level changes "abruptly".  In our 
manner of thinking with QM, we consider that the energy level goes from A 
to B, in an instantaneous fashion.  But QM doesn't discuss sub structure, 
or structural changes to sub atomic matter, and is a theory based on sub 
structure not existing in the sense of discussing the geometry and 
structural changes that manifest during the transition from one energy 
level to the next.  That is just a property of the theory.  There is 
nothing that precludes matter from actually having structure right on down 
to the Planck scale, just like a sky scraper has structure that we know of 
right down to the atomic scale (the analogy is that the entire sky scraper 
is what we think of today as the quarks and electrons, whereas we cannot 
probe beneath those scales it doesn't mean that nothing exists, beneath 
those scales).


>You should really take a look at Planck's "second theory", as
>summarized in the book by Kuhn I cited earlier in this thread.  Planck
>mulled over these issues for years; he uncovered pitfalls that are not
>altogether obvious.  (I don't remember the details, but he found out that
>emission and absorption cannot be treated symmetrically in a 
semi-classical
>hybrid with a classical EM field.)


Could you repeat the book, I missed it?


Ross Tessien


[Moderator's note: Thomas S. Kuhn, "Black-Body Theory and the Quantum
Discontinuity, 1894-1912," University of Chicago Press, 1987. -TB]