The Quantum Story by Jim Baggott (2011) Updated 2025-07-16
The Old Quantum Theory by Dirk ter Haar (1967) Updated 2025-07-16
Timeline of quantum mechanics Updated 2025-07-16
- 1859-1900: see Section "Black-body radiation experiment". Continuously improving culminating in Planck's law black-body radiation and Planck's law
- 1905 photoelectric effect and the photon
- TODO experiments
- 1905 Einstein's photoelectric effect paper. Planck was intially thinking that light was continuous, but the atoms vibrated in a discrete way. Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect throws that out of the window, and considers the photon discrete.
- 1913 atomic spectra and the Bohr model
- 1885 Balmer series, an empirical formula describes some of the lines of the hydrogen emission spectrum
- 1888 Rydberg formula generalizes the Balmer series
- 1896 Pickering series makes it look like a star has some new kind of hydrogen that produces half-integer entries in the Pickering series
- 1911 Bohr visits J. J. Thomson in the University of Cambridge for his postdoc, but they don't get along well
- Bohr visits Rutherford at the University of Manchester and decides to transfer there. During this stay he becomes interested in problems of the electronic structure of the atom.
- 1913 february: young physics professor Hans Hansen tells Bohr about the Balmer series. This is one of the final elements Bohr needed.
- 1913 Bohr model published predicts atomic spectral lines in terms of the Planck constant and other physical constant.
- explains the Pickering series as belonging to inoized helium that has a single electron. The half term in the spectral lines of this species come from the nucleus having twice the charge of hydrogen.
- 1913 March: during review before publication, Rutherford points out that instantaneous quantum jumps don't seem to play well with causality.
- 1916 Bohr-Sommerfeld model introduces angular momentum to explain why some lines are not observed, as they would violate the conservation of angular momentum.
Old quantum theory Updated 2025-07-16
Fixation (histology) Updated 2025-07-16
Maya (religion) Updated 2025-07-16
Mahabharata Updated 2025-07-16
Heat equation solution with Fourier series Updated 2025-07-16
Human hearing range Updated 2025-07-16
Secure Hash Algorithms Updated 2025-07-16
Merkle tree Updated 2025-07-16
Spring-mass system Updated 2025-07-16
The simplest harmonic oscillator system.
Coupled oscillators Updated 2025-07-16
Lagrangian vs Hamiltonian Updated 2025-07-16
The key difference from Lagrangian mechanics is that the Hamiltonian approach groups variables into pairs of coordinates called the phase space coordinates:This leads to having two times more unknown functions than in the Lagrangian. However, it also leads to a system of partial differential equations with only first order derivatives, which is nicer. Notably, it can be more clearly seen in phase space.
- generalized coordinates, generally positions or angles
- their corresponding conjugate momenta, generally velocities, or angular velocities
Phase space coordinate Updated 2025-07-16
Hamilton's equations Updated 2025-07-16
Analogous to what the Euler-Lagrange equation is to Lagrangian mechanics, Hamilton's equations give the equations of motion from a given input Hamiltonian:So once you have the Hamiltonian, you can write down this system of partial differential equations which can then be numerically solved.
Poisson bracket Updated 2025-07-16
Kudos Updated 2025-07-16
Ahh, Ciro Santilli was certain this was some slang neologism, but it is actually Greek! So funny. Introduced into English in the 19th century according to: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudo.
Mono Updated 2025-07-16
Beta Updated 2025-07-16
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