19
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How did Planck derive the black body radiation formula without using the Bose statistics?
Bose derived the black body radiation formula in early 1924 by considering the ideal gas of light quanta. Nothing could be further from Planck's mind in 1900. The idea of light quanta did not appear ...
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19
votes
Why do many names of technical and scientific subjects end with "ics"?
It is not random. These names are of Greek origin, and -ic or -ics are Anglicizations of the Greek suffix -ikos, which meant "pertaining to". In other languages it can be rendered as -ika or -ica, ...
- 73.2k
17
votes
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What did Schroedinger try to say with the cat thought experiment?
One can simply read what Schroedinger said, English translation of his paper The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935) by Trimmer is available on Jstor. The cat paradox is presented as part of ...
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16
votes
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What equation is Stephen Hawking most noted for?
One can only speculate what Hawking will be remembered for, but according to NYT in 2002 he apparently expressed a wish to have what he saw as his biggest accomplishment engraved on his tombstone (...
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15
votes
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Which physicist is this quote attributed to?
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1949), pp. 33-34:A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but ...
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14
votes
Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
Some centuries before Mermin, Leibniz in the 17th century was seeking a solution to some of the denominational quarrels that were plaguing his generation by envisioning a calculus ratiocinator that ...
- 5,062
14
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Why did Einstein oppose quantum uncertainity?
I am not sure what "explain it like a story" means, but the Bohr–Einstein debates is perhaps the most dramatic story of Einstein making his dissatisfaction known. Pais's scientific biography ...
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13
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Did light bulb companies commission Planck to study black body radiation?
Sounds like we're all on the same page. But FWIW: In all my research for that Planck book (2015), I found no evidence that he was commissioned, contracted or paid by light bulb (or similar) companies ...
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13
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Why was Alain Aspect discouraged from doing his now Nobel-winning work?
The discouragement probably had to do with the stigma attached to "hidden variables" after the Einstein-Bohr debates, see Pinch, The hidden variables controversy in quantum physics for some ...
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12
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Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
Mermin has a thorough analysis[1] and traces the phrase to himself in a 1989 Physics Today column [2] & makes a case that the numerous attributions to Feynman may or may not be mistaken.
[1] Could ...
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11
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Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
As noted, Mermin was probably the first to utter the exact words “Shut up and calculate”. However, the equivalent rallying cry of “Get the numbers out” has its origins some decades earlier.
According ...
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10
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How did gyromagnetic ratio come up before quantum mechanics, and who introduced it?
This is a very good question, I wish it got more attention. My answer will only be partial for I had difficulty finding early details on gyromagnetic effect and ratio. The concept comes up every time ...
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10
votes
How did quantum mechanics operators come into being?
It is a good question, how such a weird theory could be invented:-)
In its present form the theory was developed by Dirac (physicist)
and von Neumann (mathematician). von Neumann essentially ...
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10
votes
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Was Dirac really trying to take the square root of the Klein-Gordon operator?
One routinely speaks of the Dirac operator as a square root of the Laplacian (or Dalembertian as the case may be), and Dirac himself rather supports this heuristic in his Recollections of an exciting ...
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10
votes
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Who coined the term ''Born's rule''?
I wonder why the insistence on the (English) word rule, especially as German wikipedia translates / redirects it to interpretation. Isn’t it enough for your purposes to see it stated, named and ...
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10
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What actually led Feynman to the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics?
It was Dirac's paper The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics. He gave more than just a remark about $\exp{iS/\hbar}$, he described the general structure of the path integral expression for the transition ...
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10
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Who introduced the "dagger"symbol as conjugate transpose in quantum mechanics?
In a now-deleted comment, Consigliere ZARF listed a number of papers published in Zeitschrift für Physik in the late 1920's that used this notation. The earliest was Pascual Jordan's 1927 "Über eine ...
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10
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Why didn't the phase space formulation of Quantum Mechanics get the upper hand?
This is what they call a "good question", as the expression goes. I and my collaborators had it in the mid 1990s, and about a 3rd of the audience in my colloquia ask it to themselves and me, ...
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9
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Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
N. David Mermin (born March 30, 1935, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA) is Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University
his quote was like this
If I were forced to sum up in one ...
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9
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Why were 20th Century German scientists so impressive?
Given the historical circumstances the German education system might or might not have played a significant role in the formation of these scientists. In his collection of essays entitled "Brocas ...
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9
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Are there any records that show how Hilbert came to "invent" or "discover" Hilbert spaces?
The notion of Hilbert space comes from Hilbert's theory of integral equations. Of course, it was partially motivated by physics, by the theory of oscillations in classical mechanics, but this theory ...
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9
votes
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What is the original source for Einstein's description of entanglement as "Spooky Action at a Distance"?
Einstein was bothered by "action at a distance" long before the 1935 EPR paper, and it was not specific to entanglement. In his debates with Bohr at the 1927 Solvay congress he used the single slit ...
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9
votes
How did Stern or Gerlach, of Stern-Gerlach experiment, create individual silver atoms? How were they accelerated?
Atomic spectroscopy was very advanced 100 years ago (1920s) and we must appreciate their intelligence. If a metal like silver is being heated to the extent of boiling in high vacuum, all you get is ...
- 3,959
9
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Who was the scientist who first showed that helium has a bound state, and was he a nazi?
The publication in question is: Georg W. Kellner, "Die Ionisierungsspannung des Heliums nach der Schrödingerschen Theorie." Zeitschrift für Physik, Vol. 44, Nos. 1-2, Jul. 1927, pp. 91-109 (...
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9
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Why was the Greek letter psi (Ψ) chosen to represent the wave function?
Prior to Schrodinger
There is no use of the symbol by de Broglie, Schrodinger's predecessor. In the first three short notes from de Broglie on the topic of wave mechanics (1923), there is no use of ...
- 1,119
8
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein propose a perpetual motion machine to try to disprove quantum mechanics?
Actually what Einstein proposed was not a perpetual motion machine but was an experiment design to take down the Uncertainty principle. So Einstein design an experiment known as "Einstein's box". It ...
- 2,540
8
votes
Accepted
How did Planck calculate the Planck constant?
See How did Planck derive the black body radiation formula without using the Bose statistics? for general circumstances of Planck's discovery. Specifically, Planck was trying to reproduce the ...
- 73.2k
8
votes
Did wave optics anticipate quantum mechanics?
It is more accurate to say that Hamilton anticipated some of the ideas of mathematics and heuristics of quantum mechanics, that would later inspire Schrödinger to produce his formulation of wave ...
- 73.2k
8
votes
Did light bulb companies commission Planck to study black body radiation?
After looking into more reputable sources it seems that the "commissioned by electricity companies" is a confabulation, and the "commissioned by the German Bureau of Standards" is ...
- 73.2k
8
votes
Origin of operators in quantum mechanics
From where did the concept of operator in quantum mechanics came, historically?
This was a gradual development started by Heisenberg's insight. He invented (infinite) matrices (without any prior ...
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