Bohr's Creation of his Quantum Atom

John Hendry

V. P. Milant’ev

The history of the creation and development of Bohr's atomic theory is discussed. Even now, with a consistent quantum theory available, Bohr's theory is not simply the property of history, of methodological interest only. To this day, the ideas of the theory not only provide an excellent introduction to atomic physics, but are also used successfully in treating atomic Rydberg states, exotic atoms, etc.

Werner A. Hofer

I revisit the reply of Bohr to Einstein. Bohr's assertion that there are no causes in atomic scale systems is, as a closer analysis reveals, not in line with the Copenhagen interpretation since it would contain a statement about reality. What Bohr should have written is that there are no causes in mathematics, which is universally acknowledged. The law of causality requires physical effects to be due to physical causes. For this reason any theoretical model which replaces physical causes by mathematical objects is creationism, that is, it creates physical objects out of mathematical elements. I show that this is the case for most of quantum mechanics.

Carl E. Behrens

J. J. Mestayer, B. Wyker, F. B. Dunning +3 more

The use of a periodic train of half-cycle pulses to maintain strongly-localized wavepackets in high-n (n ∼ 306) atoms that travel in near-circular orbits about the nucleus is demonstrated. The wavepacket is non-dispersive for hundreds of orbits and mimics the original Bohr model of the hydrogen atom.