Chapter 14
Ten Quantum Physics Triumphs
In This Chapter
- Explaining unexpected results
- Identifying characteristics of the quantum world
- Developing new models
Quantum physics has been very successful in explaining many physical phenomena, such as wave-particle duality. In fact, quantum physics was created to explain physical measurements that classical physics couldn't explain. This chapter is about ten triumphs of quantum physics, and it points you to resources on the Web that examine those triumphs for further information.
Wave-Particle Duality
Is that particle a wave? Or is that wave a particle? That's one of the questions that quantum physics was created to solve, because particles exhibited wave-like properties in the lab, whereas waves exhibited particle-like properties.
These Web sites offer more insight:
The Photoelectric Effect
Another founding pillar of quantum physics was explaining the photoelectric effect, in which experimenters shone light on a metal. No matter how strong the light, the energy of ejected electrons from the metal didn't rise. It turns out that the energy of electrons goes up with the frequency of the light, not its intensity — which gives support to the light as a stream of discrete photons theory.
For more info on the photoelectric effect, check out www.gilestv.com/tutorials/quantum.html.
Postulating Spin
The Stern-Gerlach experiment results ...
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