classical physics

Today we were discussing the quantised energy levels (again) because it was "crucial to repeat Max Planck's hypothesis 5 times"



Let me first introduce the bricks and water analogy with regards to explaining (what are we calling it at this stage? Quantised states of stuff?). To be fair, Mr Khoury did express his dislike for this analogy initially - I don't see why. If you weren't being retarded like we were, it's a pretty good analogy.

So energy levels. Classical theory thought it was like water - it was a continuous variable. You can have as much water in your bucket as you want. i.e. the amount of water is a subset of the Real+ numbers

Quantum physics thinks it is like bricks. You have to add one brick at a time, it is a discrete variable. You can't (for the purposes of this demonstration) add half a brick or a quarter of a brick. i.e the "amount" of bricks is a subset of the Integers+.

Mr Khoury said something like "So classical theory thought that energy was a continuous variable. Only when Max Planck's little trick came along did anyone start considering it as a discrete variable. But if you take a look at Planck's Constant, 6.6E-34, it is a very very small number. So you can forgive them for thinking that it was continuous. The packets of energy are so small that you would be fooled into thinking it was continuous"



Me, chiming: "You could say the same about water. If you wanted to you could count the number of molecules and it is discrete."

Khoury (lol-ing): "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME! WHY ARE YOU COMING ALONG WITH THIS SUBATOMIC STUFF?!"

Brian: "But we can forgive you for thinking that it is a continuous variable."



(Sadly I don't think many people heard Brian's. It was much funnier :L)







Anyways by the end of the period, I discovered that we need to know nothing about physics to pass this stupid course.

Things we don't know:

-Why quantised energies of photons would solve the UV catastrophe (neither quantitatively nor qualitatively), just that it did.

-Its impact on quantum mechanics in any greater detail than that "because now we consider energy is quantised lulz."

-I can't remember the other thing but I was thinking I was screwed because I did not understand the reasons behind many cause-effect relationships. Turns out if we can just memorise the cause-effect flow without needing to have a proper understanding of why, this topic (whatever that photoelectric effect chunk is categorised as) is set.



I swear by the end of that episode, all you need to know about Planck can almost be summarised in the formula E=hf.