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Failure of Classical Physics and Birth of Quantum Mechanics

Classical physics failed to explain certain experimental observations, leading to the development of quantum mechanics. Some key problems included the ultraviolet catastrophe, Planck's explanation of blackbody radiation using energy quanta, Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect using Planck's hypothesis, and Bohr's solution to the problem of electrons radiating away in atoms by postulating angular momentum quantization. Compton scattering provided further evidence that light behaves as both a particle and wave. Quantum mechanics was thus developed with different probabilistic approaches from classical physics to establish wave-particle duality and explain these phenomena.

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Satyaki Chowdhury
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1K views1 page

Failure of Classical Physics and Birth of Quantum Mechanics

Classical physics failed to explain certain experimental observations, leading to the development of quantum mechanics. Some key problems included the ultraviolet catastrophe, Planck's explanation of blackbody radiation using energy quanta, Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect using Planck's hypothesis, and Bohr's solution to the problem of electrons radiating away in atoms by postulating angular momentum quantization. Compton scattering provided further evidence that light behaves as both a particle and wave. Quantum mechanics was thus developed with different probabilistic approaches from classical physics to establish wave-particle duality and explain these phenomena.

Uploaded by

Satyaki Chowdhury
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Failure of classical physics and birth

of quantum mechanics.
By the end of nineteenth century all the known laws of physics were easily
understandable by the Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell's equations describing
electricity and magnetism and on statistical mechanics describing the state of
large collection of matter. However the observations of some experiments
could not be explained on the basis of these known laws.

Some of the basic problems that led to the origin of quantum


mechanics are as follows.
1. Classical physics predicted that heated objects emit instantly all their heat into EM
waves. Maxwell's calculation showed that the radiation rate went to infinity as the EM
wavelength went to zero, "THE ULTRAVIOLET CATASTROPHE".

2. Planck solved the problem by postulating that energy of EM wave is emitted in the
form of quanta with energy E=hf, (f=frequency of the radiation).

3. Observations of the PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT cannot be explained if we consider


radiation to be wave like obeying classical electromagnetic theory. Einstein explained
the photoelectric effect using planck's quantum hypothesis.

4. After Rutherford suggested that positive charge in atoms was concentrated at the
centre and negative electrons revolved around the nucleus, classical physics predicted
that the electrons would radiate energy away and would spiral into the nucleus. This
does not happen of course. Bohr's atomic model postulated an angular momentum
quantization rule, L=nh/2.

5. The scattering of light of electrons "COMPTON SCATTERING " showed that light
behaves as a particle but changes wavelength in the scattering, providing evidence of
the particle nature of light.

Quantum mechanics thus establishes the wave particle


duality and explains all the above phenomenon. The
approach is quite different from the classical physics.
While the classical laws are deterministic quantum
mechanics is probabilistic.

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