An account of Max Planck’s construction of his theory of blackbody radiation, summarizing the established physics on which he drew. In the last year of the nineteenth century, Max Planck constructed a theory of blackbody radiation—the radiation emitted and absorbed by nonreflective bodies in thermal equilibrium with one another—and his work ushered in the quantum revolution in physics. In this book, three physicists trace Planck’s discovery. They follow the trail of Planck’s thinking by constructing a textbook of sorts that summarizes the established physics on which he drew. By offering this account, the authors explore not only how Planck deployed his considerable knowledge of the physics of his era but also how Einstein and others used and interpreted Planck’s work. Planck did not set out to lay the foundation for the quantum revolution but to study a universal phenomenon for which empirical evidence had been accumulating since the late 1850s. The authors explain the nineteenth-century concepts that informed Planck’s discovery, including electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. In addition, the book offers the first translations of important papers by Ludwig Boltzmann and Wilhelm Wien on which Planck’s work depended.

An account of Max Planck’s construction of his theory of blackbody radiation, summarizing the established physics on which he drew. In the last year of the nineteenth century, Max Planck constructed a theory of blackbody radiation—the radiation emitted and absorbed by nonreflective bodies in thermal equilibrium with one another—and his work ushered in the quantum revolution in physics. In this book, three physicists trace Planck’s discovery. They follow the trail of Planck’s thinking by constructing a textbook of sorts that summarizes the established physics on which he drew. By offering this account, the authors explore not only how Planck deployed his considerable knowledge of the physics of his era but also how Einstein and others used and interpreted Planck’s work. Planck did not set out to lay the foundation for the quantum revolution but to study a universal phenomenon for which empirical evidence had been accumulating since the late 1850s. The authors explain the nineteenth-century concepts that informed Planck’s discovery, including electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. In addition, the book offers the first translations of important papers by Ludwig Boltzmann and Wilhelm Wien on which Planck’s work depended.

"A concise historical study of On the trail of blackbody radiation, intended to provide insight into the process of scientific discovery"--

"A masterly assessment of the way the idea of quanta of radiation became part of 20th-century physics. . . . The book not only deals with a topic of importance and interest to all scientists, but is also a polished literary work, described (accurately) by one of its original reviewers as a scientific detective story."—John Gribbin, New Scientist "Every scientist should have this book."—Paul Davies, New Scientist

LED Lighting is a self-contained and introductory-level book featuring a blend of theory and applications that thoroughly covers this important interdisciplinary area. Building on the underlying fields of optics, photonics, and vision science, it comprises four parts. PART I is devoted to fundamentals. The behavior of light is described in terms of rays, waves, and photons. Each of these approaches is best suited to a particular set of applications. The properties of blackbody radiation, thermal light, and incandescent light are derived and explained. The essentials of semiconductor physics are set forth, including the operation of junctions and heterojunctions, quantum wells and quantum dots, and organic and perovskite semiconductors. PART II deals with the generation of light in semiconductors, and details the operation and properties of III-V semiconductor devices (MQWLEDs and μLEDs), quantum-dot devices (QLEDs & WOLEDs), organic semiconductor devices (OLEDs, SMOLEDs, PLEDs, & WOLEDs), and perovskite devices (PeLEDs, PPeLEDs, QPeLEDs, & PeWLEDs). PART III focuses on vision and the perception of color, as well as on colorimetry. It delineates radiometric and photometric quantities as well as efficacy and efficiency measures. It relays the significance of metrics often encountered in LED lighting, including the color rendering index (CRI), color temperature (CT), correlated color temperature (CCT), and chromaticity diagram. PART IV is devoted to LED lighting, focusing on its history and salutary features, and on how this modern form of illumination is deployed. It describes the principal components used in LED lighting, including white phosphor-conversion LEDs, chip-on-board (COB) devices, color-mixing LEDs, hybrid devices, LED filaments, retrofit LED lamps, LED luminaires, and OLED light panels. It concludes with a discussion of smart lighting and connected lighting. Each chapter contains highlighted equations, color-coded figures, practical examples, and reading lists.

This is the second of two volumes on the genesis of quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the 20th century. It covers the period 1923-1927. After covering some of the difficulties the old quantum theory had run into by the early 1920s as well as the discovery of the exclusion principle and electron spin, it traces the emergence of two forms of the new quantum mechanics, matrix mechanics and wave mechanics, in the years 1923-27. It then shows how the new theory took care of some of the failures of the old theory and put its successes on a more solid basis. Finally, it shows how in 1927 the two forms of the new theory were unified, first through statistical transformation theory, then through the Hilbert space formalism. This volume provides a detailed analysis of the classic papers by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Dirac, De Broglie, Einstein, Schrödinger, von Neumann and other authors. Drawing on the correspondence of these and other physicists, their later reminiscences and the extensive secondary literature on the "quantum revolution", this volume places these papers in the context of the discussions out of which modern quantum mechanics emerged. It argues that the genesis of modern quantum mechanics can be seen as the construction of an arch on a scaffold provided by the old quantum theory, discarded once the arch could support itself.

Einstein's theories of relativity piqued public curiosity more than any other mathematical concepts since the time of Isaac Newton. Scientists and non-scientists alike struggled, not so much to grasp as to believe the weird predictions of relativity theory--shrinking space ships, bending light beams, and the like. People all over the world watched with fascination as Einstein's predictions were relentlessly and unequivocally verified by a hundred experiments and astronomical observations. In the last decade of the twentieth-century, another of Einstein's theories has produced results that are every bit as startling as the space-time contractions of relativity theory. This book addresses his other great theory, that of heat capacity and the Bose-Einstein condensate. In doing so, it traces the history of radiation and heat capacity theory from the mid-19th century to the present. It describes early attempts to understand heat and light radiation and proceeds through the theory of the heat capacity of solids. It arrives at the theory of superconductivity and superfluidity--the astonishing property of some liquids to crawl spontaneously up and out of their containers, and the ability of some gases to cause light to pause and take a moment's rest from its inexorable flight forward in time. Couched in the terminology of traditional physical chemistry, this book is accessible to chemists, engineers, materials scientists, mathematicians, mathematical biologists, indeed to anyone with a command of first-year calculus. In course work, it is a collateral text to third semester or advanced physical chemistry, introductory statistical mechanics, statistical thermodynamics, or introductory quantum chemistry. The book connects with mainstream physical chemistry by treating boson and fermion influences in molecular spectroscopy, statistical thermodynamics, molecular energetics, entropy, heat capacities (especially of metals), superconductivity, and superfluidity.

A complete overview of quantum mechanics, covering essential concepts and results, theoretical foundations, and applications. This undergraduate textbook offers a comprehensive overview of quantum mechanics, beginning with essential concepts and results, proceeding through the theoretical foundations that provide the field’s conceptual framework, and concluding with the tools and applications students will need for advanced studies and for research. Drawn from lectures created for MIT undergraduates and for the popular MITx online course, “Mastering Quantum Mechanics,” the text presents the material in a modern and approachable manner while still including the traditional topics necessary for a well-rounded understanding of the subject. As the book progresses, the treatment gradually increases in difficulty, matching students’ increasingly sophisticated understanding of the material. • Part 1 covers states and probability amplitudes, the Schrödinger equation, energy eigenstates of particles in potentials, the hydrogen atom, and spin one-half particles • Part 2 covers mathematical tools, the pictures of quantum mechanics and the axioms of quantum mechanics, entanglement and tensor products, angular momentum, and identical particles. • Part 3 introduces tools and techniques that help students master the theoretical concepts with a focus on approximation methods. • 236 exercises and 286 end-of-chapter problems • 248 figures

Uranium, a nondescript element when found in nature, in the past century has become more sought after than gold. Its nucleus is so heavy that it is highly unstable and radioactive. If broken apart, it unleashes the tremendous power within the atom--the most controversial type of energy ever discovered. Set against the darkening shadow of World War II, Amir D. Aczel's suspenseful account tells the story of the fierce competition among the day's top scientists to harness nuclear power. The intensely driven Marie Curie identified radioactivity. The University of Berlin team of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner--he an upright, politically conservative German chemist and she a soft-spoken Austrian Jewish theoretical physicist--achieved the most spectacular discoveries in fission. Curie's daughter, Ir ne Joliot-Curie, raced against Meitner and Hahn to break the secret of the splitting of the atom. As the war raged, Niels Bohr, a founder of modern physics, had a dramatic meeting with Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist in charge of the Nazi project to beat the Allies to the bomb. And finally, in 1942, Enrico Fermi, a prodigy from Rome who had fled the war to the United States, unleashed the first nuclear chain reaction in a racquetball court at the University of Chicago. At a time when the world is again confronted with the perils of nuclear armament, Amir D. Aczel's absorbing story of a rivalry that changed the course of history is as thrilling and suspenseful as it is scientifically revelatory and newsworthy.