by Shana Priwer & Cynthia Phillips, Ph.D.

The theory of quantum mechanics began with the first realizations that energy levels at a subatomic scale seemed to be quantized rather than continuous. The first step toward this insight came with the work of Max Planck in 1900 on black body radiation. Planck suggested that a classic puzzle, that of the amount of radiation given off from a heated body, could be explained if the radiation were emitted in discrete packets he called “quanta.” Planck also suggested that the size of the radiation packet was related to the frequency. [Read more] ...