The Meaning of Plancks Law
The meaning of Planck’s Formula
As Planck continued to make calculations, they all led to the same conclusion. It simply didn’t fit with what he believed had to be true. No one, including himself, could quite understand this J
E = nhv ( n = 0, 1, 2, …….. )
That was his conclusion. It doesn’t seem important, but its
implications were beyond imagination. If one were to interpret it literally,
then the energy of light waves can only have certain fixed values.
Here, left side E of
the equation is the energy of light. The right side of the equation is an
integral value which represents the various energy levels obtained by
multiplying Planck’s constant h by frequency v. Thus, according to this
equation, the energy of light changes in incremental values of hv and intermediate
values such as 1.5hv, or 0.2 hv never arise under any circumstances.
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Such fixed
differences in energy are known as “energy levels”.
If we consider the characteristics of waves, this is
definitely odd. One characteristics of waves is that
Energy α amplitude*2
The energy of a wave is proportional to the square of the
amplitude.
We know, Planck, E = nhv. The energy of light is hv times an
integer; the energy of a wave is determined by its amplitude. So…. FOR ENRGY
LEVELS TO BE DISCRETE it must follow that THE AMPLITUDES OF WAVES MUST BE
DISCRETE. The amplitude is the height at the crest of an oscillating wave. So even
though we are talking about light waves, it shouldn’t be any more difficult to
understand. Light waves oscillate up and down exactly like any other kind of
wave.
The problem is that the amplitude of an oscillating light
waves can only has certain given values. Although ordinary waves can have any
amplitude, light waves alone cannot oscillate except at certain fixed amplitudes.
In case of light waves, we just have to accept the notion of discrete
amplitude. If we don’t, there is no way to explain blackbody radiation spectraLLLL.
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