If so, it was a trick that *worked*.

Previous efforts to derive the blackbody emission spectrum using classical physics gave nonsensical results at high frequencies. Replace continuous emission with discrete quanta and things work out perfectly.

Evidence for the reality of quanta began with Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905. The proposal that radiation of frequency f exists only in discrete chunks of energy E=hf was the first result of Einstein’s “Miracle Year.”

@GuyDudeman Quanta are real! There isn’t some complicated classical process underlying it all. Excitations of the electromagnetic field (photons) carry energy only in discrete chunks.

Planck’s quantum hypothesis would revolutionize physics, but he initially thought it wasn’t real. He suspected that the interaction of matter and radiation was tremendously complicated but still governed by the physics known at the time — what we now call “classical physics.”

Invoking quanta of radiation to derive the blackbody emission spectrum was, it seemed to Planck, just a mathematical trick that somehow encapsulated all that complication.

Happy #QuantumDay to all who celebrate!

Max Planck presented work on blackbody radiation to the German Physical Society #OTD in 1900. His novel “quantum hypothesis” suggested that matter emits and absorbs light with frequency f only in discrete chunks of energy E=hf.

Image: AIP

How am I supposed to grade final exams with a dog on my arm. This is preposterous.

Return of the radiator wolf.

@jeaton Check further down the thread – there’s a link to a piece about the history of the term. It had long been in use by the time she found an actual bug in the computer.

☝️Grace Hopper – “Amazing Grace” was born #OTD in 1906.

@jqheywood ANSEL ADAMS DUNGEONS & DRAGONS STAMPS??

When there’s a buffet at the office holiday party.

The USPS is releasing a line of Dungeons & Dragons stamps.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2023/1130-usps-reveals-additional-stamps-for-2024.htm

Funny how, when a service does this, they don’t even put irony quotes around “purchased” as a courtesy.

@_thegeoff The character is canonically Jewish, but I don't if that was something that Lee and Kirby always intended, or something they decided later on. I never really thought about the golem connection!

To everyone celebrating this evening, Happy Hanukkah from Jack Kirby and Ben Grimm.

@benknispel Oh yes, I tagged him in a similar post on the bird site. Didn't realize he was here, too!

How it started / How it's going

A paper by Falcke, Melia, and Agol appeared in The Astrophysical Journal #OTD in 1999, arguing it might be feasible to image the shadow of a distant supermassive black hole using Very Long Baseline Interferometry.

Over the last few years, the Event Horizon Telescope has imaged the shadows of supermassive black holes at the center of M87 and our own Milky Way.

Images: EHT Collaboration.

@jhv They would be, if I owned a restaurant!

Man, I didn't know I OWNED a restaurant.

Laird became an instructor at Mount Holyoke in 1901, was promoted to department head in 1903 and full professor in 1904, then worked there until 1940.

She staffed their undergrad-only program with active researchers whose output was comparable to larger departments with graduate programs.

Physicist Elizabeth Laird was born #OTD in 1874. Over the course of her career she worked on spectroscopy, soft X-rays, and radiation absorption by tissue.

In 1909 she became the first woman accepted by J.J. Thomson to do research at Cavendish Laboratory.

Image: Mount Holyoke