The crisis of classical physics

1. Black body radiation

Ermanno Amata
Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali
INAF
Via del fosso del cavaliere, 100
00133 Roma

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

An almost perfect vision of nature

At the end of the nineteenth century, most physicists probably reckoned that they knew the laws and methods
to explain all physical phenomena.
Newtons mechanics allowed them to describe the motion of any object.
Newtons gravitation seemed to be able to explain the motion of planets and celestial bodies.
Maxwells laws were at hand to treat electromagnetic phenomena.
Thermodynamics had clarified the concepts of heat and temperature and their relation to energy and work.
In conclusion, one might have thought that it would be possible and straightforward to extend the application
of all known physical concepts to fields in which investigation was just being started:
- the microscopic nature of matter,
- the nature of stars,
- the universe as a whole.
Yet, some reasons to doubt that this would be possible had already become evident.
As an example, we may recall the awareness, dating back to1850-1860, that the precession of Mercurys
perihelion could not be explained by simply applying Newtons mechanics and gravitation.
A further example concerned the difficulty in reconciliating Newtons mechanics (whose equations are
perfectly reversible in time) with the second law of thermodynamics (which clearly states that natural
processes are irreversible).

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Certainties are shattered

Many certainties were shattered, when physicists obtained new experimental results
which forced them to develop two new visions of nature:
- quantum mechanics,
- relativity.
In my lectures, I shall only deal with the birth of quantum mechanics, but I will also
have to recall some basic concepts of special relativity.
I shall treat the following subjects:
- black body radiation,
- the corpuscular nature of light (Compton and photo-electric effects),
- Thomsons, Rutherfords and Bohrs atoms.
In so doing, I shall follow your physics textbook (Amaldi Blu per licei scientifici).
However, I will depart from it from time to time.

P.S. I have downloaded some digital images from the Internet. In doing that, I have found out that there is a large amount of web sites
which deal with physics at various levels. Students can easily find them .

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Definition of black body

A black body is an object capable of absorbing all electromagnetic waves of any frequency (i.e. wavelength).
In a laboratory, a black body consists of a hollow object having the following characteristics:
- a small hole, which allows electromagnetic radiation to enter and to leave the cavity;
- internal walls which poorly reflect any electromagnetic radiation and are kept at constant and uniform
temperature.
In reality, it is the hole itself which appears to the outside world as a black body.
On the basis of this definition, it is easy to conclude that a black body in thermal equilibrium will absorb all
electromagnetic radiation entering its hole. Nevertheless, a black body will also emit some electromagnetic
radiation: we call this emitted radiation black body radiation.
The concept of an ideal black body was introduced by
Kirchoff in 1860.
He also proved that black body radiation should be a
function of temperature and wavelength only, but he
failed to determine the form of such a function.
In the next decades, physicists extensively studied black
body radiation.
They found results that eventually appeared to be very
disturbing, as they severely defied many attempts to
explain them in terms of the known laws of statistical
mechanics, thermodynamics and electromagnetism.
Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Black body radiation and Wiens displacement law

The figure on the left shows how the spectral radiance

of a black body depends on temperature and on
wavelength ().
Vertical axis: spectral radiance, i.e. energy emitted per
unit area, per unit time, per unit solid angle and per unit
wavelength (kW sr-1 m-2 nm-1).
Spectral radiance has dimensions [E] [t]-1[l]-3.

We see that at 5000 K the peak of emission falls roughly in the middle of the visible spectrum. At this
temperature the black body exhibits a whitish colour. As the temperature decreases, the peak moves
towards the higher wavelength limit of visible light, i.e. towards red. Finally, for T=830 K (not plotted in the
figure) there will be no visible emission and the hole of the cavity will appear as a black body according to
everyday experience.
The dependence of the spectral radiance peak on wavelength was derived by Wilhelm Wien in 1893 by
means of thermodynamic arguments. Wiens displacement law can be written as

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Black body radiation and Wiens distribution law

Three years later, in 1896, Wien made a step forward
towards the interpretation of the experimental spectral
radiance. For that purpose, he combined his
displacement law with Stefan-Boltzmanns law
(known since 1884), i.e.

which provided a formula to calculate the overall

energy emitted by a black body at all wavelengths per
unit time and unit solid angle. Here is an ad hoc
constant, which we shall interpret later on.
The new result obtained by Wien is now usually called Wiens distribution law and reads:.

Here A and B are two ad hoc constants. This law shows that spectral radiance goes to 0 as ; moreover,
it shows that it goes through a maximum as decreases and eventually tends to 0 as 0.
For a few years, it seemed that the problem of explaining black body emission had been solved.
However, further measurements in the far infrared range ( < 60 m, not shown in the figure) revealed that
Wiens distribution law did not reproduce experimental data at such wavelengths.
In conclusion, at the beginning of the 20th century physicists had still to find a law which would
describe accurately the spectral radiance of black body at all wavelengths.
Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

The ultra-violet catastrophe

A further attempt was made in 1900 by the English

physicist Lord Raleigh who published a paper in which
he treated the problem of black body radiation by
making use of Maxwells laws.
He got what is now called the Raleigh-Jeans law:

where kB is Boltzmanns constant, T is the absolute

temperature and is the wavelength.
This law accurately reproduced experimental data in the microwave range (not shown in the figure).
To see how it performs at lower wavelengths, we just add the Raleigh-Jeans curve for T = 5000K.
We notice that, as wavelength increases, the Raleigh-Jeans law approaches the experimental curve.
Unfortunately, the mismatch at low wavelengths is extremely bad!
Worse than that, the Ralyeigh-Jeans law yields an infinite emission of energy from the black body, whatever
is the temperature. This is due to the dependence of the spectral radiance on 1/ 4.
This was later on called the ultraviolet catastrophe!

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Wien, Raleigh-Jeans

Planck

Let us now stop for a while and recall where physicists stood in 1900 with regard to black body radiation.
They had at hand two laws, both derived in the framework of classical electromagnetism:
- Wiens distribution law which worked well at low wavelengths only;
- Raleigh-Jeans law, which worked well at high wavelengths only.
It is clear that there was the need to develop a new law which included both.
Moreover, in order to develop such a new law, new ideas were probably needed.
This is exactly what Max Planck did in 1900.
Your textbook does not explain how Planck did it. I will not fully explain that either.
However, I can show to you how he probably got his idea from a mathematical point of view and I will give
you some hints on how he later on gave a physical interpretation of his law.
Let us compare Raleigh-Jeans and Wiens laws (the latter written in a slightly different form):

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Some calculations
We modify Wiens law by adding a teensy-weensy -1 to the exponential in the denominator, so as to get

We recall that, for

, i.e. for very large ,

This yields that, for very large ,

i.e. nothing else than Raleigh-Jeans law.

On the other hand, as approaches 0,
exactly Wiens distribution law:

>>1. Therefore, we can neglect -1, so as to retrieve

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

Plancks law and more

Planck announced his result to the Berlin Physical society on October 19, 1900, in the following form:

This was an empirical formula with two ad hoc constants.

He then developed a theory, presented to the Berlin Physical society on December 14, 1900.
In order to do that, he chose to deny a fundamental assertion of the classical theory of electromagnetism,
which ruled that the exchange of energy betweeen the walls of the black body cavity and radiation
occurred in a continuous way.
Instead, he made the assumption that radiation energy could be emitted or absorbed only in amounts
which are all multiples of a tiny quantity.
In other words, radiation could be emitted or absorbed only at energies En = n, where n is a positive integer
and denotes a tiny amount of energy. All other values would be forbidden.
Planck also assumed that energy should be linked to frequency by the relation:
where h is called, since then, Plancks constant (h=6,62607x10-34Js).

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.

These assumptions have the practical effect of greatly diminishing the amount of energy which can be
emitted at low wavelenghts, so as to avoid the ultraviolet catastrophe.
In this way, Planck obtained the black body radiation law.
By integrating Plancks law over all wavelengths, it is possible to derive Stefan-Boltzmanns law and to show
that = (25k4)/(15c2h3).
For many years, Planck himself did not fully accept his discovery, which completely shattered the classical
vision of nature.
In fact, some years later he wrote: my futile attempts to fit the elementary quantum of action (i.e. h)
somehow into the classical theory continued for a number of years, and they cost me a great deal of effort!
Although Planck gave birth to quantum mechanics by quantising the energy of the oscillators in the black
body cavity, he still treated the radiation as an electromagnetic wave.
The next step towards quanta was made by Albert Einstein
P.S. There is a minor difference (a factor ) between the form of Plancks law I have used and the one reported in your textbook. In fact your
textbook considers the radiance (energy per unit surface per unit wavelength) instead of spectral radiance (energy per unit surface per unit solid
angle per unit wavelength). This difference does not affect at all the considerations I have made.

Lectures delivered at the Liceo Scientifico Statale Bruno Touschek, Grottaferrata, on February 16, 17 and 18, 2015.