Re: problems with classical physics

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

> What are some of the problems (or unresolved issues) with classical physics
> that provided impetus for modern physics (relativity or the quantum
> revolution)?
>
> The blackbody ultraviolet catastrophe is always near the top of everybody's
> list; what else would you add to make the list complete?  Photoelectric
> effect?  Aether?
>
> Thanks,
> Larry

You probably need to check the timing, but I would think that
superconductivity and the problems with the specific heat curves at
low temperatures probably had an impact.   . They were    a bit later
than the first things, however.

Of course there is al   ways the discoveries of radioactivity and
x-rays (in the reverse order) in 1895-96 .

I can't help but think that JJ Thomson's  discovery of the electron
and his resulting "plum pudding " model of the atom was
intellectually unsatisfactory to his contemporaries, and led to the
Rutherford experiments, but I have no direct evidence for that and
have not been able to get any historian of science interested in
pursuing it.

And then there is the problem of spectroscopy. The very existence of
the line spectra and such things as the Zeeman effect, and the
anomalous Zeeman effect, which couldn't be explained by Bohr's first
attempt at a quantum theory, had to be something of an incentive,
especially after Bohr's theory enabled a derivation of the Rydberg
formula.

I think that in summary, one can say that things were very unsettled
by the end of the century and by the teens were pretty much in chaos,
not to be much settled until Schroedinger, Heisenberg and Dirac did
their things in the mid twenties.
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
******************************************************