Quantum mechanics constituted a great scientific and cultural revolution that profoundly changed our approach to the study of the microscopic and subatomic world. The birth and evolution of the theories of quantum mechanics are revived through the personal and scientific history of the protagonists, their attempts and their working hypotheses, the discoveries, doubts and discussions. The substantially counterintuitive concepts of the new mechanics have redesigned the meaning of our knowledge of the world of atoms; particular attention is then paid to the impact that this new vision of the microscopic world has had on chemistry and our knowledge of the structure and reactivity of atoms and molecules.
Quantum mechanics constituted a great scientific and cultural revolution that profoundly changed our approach to the study of the microscopic and subatomic world. The birth and evolution of the theories of quantum mechanics are revived through the personal and scientific history of the protagonists, their attempts and their working hypotheses, the discoveries, doubts and discussions. The substantially counterintuitive concepts of the new mechanics have redesigned the meaning of our knowledge of the world of atoms; particular attention is then paid to the impact that this new vision of the microscopic world has had on chemistry and our knowledge of the structure and reactivity of atoms and molecules.
In this book the concepts of Quantum Mechanics, such as the atomic model, the wave-particle duality, the materials’\nphysics, spectroscopy… are introduced using a phenomenological approach. We study as experimental events led to the birth of Quantum Mechanics and how mathematical methods and experiments provided a new key to the interpretation of the atomic world and beyond. The purpose is to simplify the understanding of the essential points of a theory which is increasingly involved with many aspects of the present and in developing technologies, despite the quantum world is still hardly noticeable in everyday experience.
As with any scientific revolution, quantum mechanics entailed a profound revision of our fundamental epistemological concepts and also of our worldview as a whole. This was the case for the concepts of causality and reality. Around these concepts, there arose in the third decade of the last century a heated debate in which almost all the scientists and philosophers of the time took part and which in a certain sense is still going on today. The Author provides a reconstruction of the various different positions, from the conservative attempt to defend determinism to the most radical stochastic positions, and singles out in Ernst Cassirer’s solution the most convincing approach.
Probably no theory in the history of science has produced such a profound cultural and scientific revolution as is determined by quantum mechanics. Founded around 1920 by illustrious physicists, all Nobel Prize winners, it has completely subverted the conception of matter and the universe. The theory that all matter is made up of atoms has already been formulated by Greek philosophers, starting with Democritus. Quantum mechanics provided a description based on a new conception of the elementary structure of atoms, and formulated the fundamental laws to which atoms obey. Quantum theory has obtained the unanimous and shared consent of the scientific world, although some aspects have not been definitively confirmed. Strengthened by the universal acceptance of his theories, quantum mechanics claims its intellectual primacy over all the other sciences, and the scientific world seems to grant it, so much so as to archive all the knowledge and achievements gathered in its thousand-year history. From the epistemological point of view all established theories are worthy of consideration and must be shared and accepted until proven groundless. Dating, quantum mechanics still enjoys the consent of many scientists, but this does not mean that it can claim to be the repository of all truth, based on an unacceptable and anti-scientific syllogism for which: A) all organic and inorganic matter is formed by atoms and molecules; B) quantum mechanics has founded theories and formulas to which atoms and molecules obey; C) accordingly quantum mechanics can control all universal matter. But the presumption of its predominance goes further than willing to dominate living matter. In this article we are going to examine with a sharp criticism, the aberrant and anti-scientific claim of this discipline to dominate not only science but also universal matter. We propose a more moderate and considered vision of the observable natural phenomena and consider them events in continuous evolution, and to adapt our hypotheses and theories with an equal evolutionary approach.
Quantum mechanics is one of the great success stories of modern physics, making sense of the very small just as Einstein's theory of relativity made sense of the very large. But, for most students, the ideas that make quantum mechanics powerful can be confusing and counterintuitive. This volume in the Greenwood Guides to Great Ideas in Science series provides a history of quantum mechanics from the early breakthroughs of Planck and Einstein, at the beginning of the 20th century, to the present frontiers of quantum computing and quantum gravity. The approach is entirely non-technical, and is aimed at the general reader who may not have much mathematical background but who has a strong curiosity about some of the most important developments in modern science. Quantum Mechanics: A Historical Perspectivetraces the history of this powerful theory, including: ; The early discoveries by Max Planck and Albert Einstein regarding the quantization of radiation ; The early quantum theory, including Neils Bohr's theory of the atom ; The birth of modern quantum mechanics through the work of Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Dirac and others ; Applications of quantum mechanics in chemistry, nuclear physics, electronics, and many other areas ; Recent work in quantum computation and quantum information theory The book emphasizes the fact that despite the great success of quantum mechanics, many exciting intellectual frontiers remain open for further researchers to explore. It includes a glossary, a timeline, and a bibliography of accessible resources for further research.
‘The quantum world of the atom’ considers the profound discoveries of the early twentieth century that exposed the inner structure of the atom and the revolutionary new physics of quantum mechanics—the behaviour of matter on very small scales. At the microscopic level, ‘particles’ of matter resemble waves, a feature that enables us to understand the structure, stability, and properties of atoms. Key discoveries and concepts are described: the fundamental constant of nature, Planck’s constant; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle; the Schrödinger equation; quantum tunnelling; the wavelike characteristics of microscopic particles; and the two types of particles, fermions and bosons.
The last century has been a period of extreme interest for scientific research, marked by the overcoming of the classical frontiers of scientific knowledge.Research oriented towards the infinitely small and infinitely big, in both cases beyondthe borders of the visible. Quantum physics has led to a new Copernican revolution,opening the way to new questions that have led to a new view of reality. At the sametime, new theories have developed, involving every field of science, philosophy and art, rediscovering the link between unity and totality and the importance of humanpotential. In a transdisciplinary approach we consider quantum field theory, new ideason the concepts of vacuum and entanglement, metaphysical aspects of quantum revolution and the introduction of different interpretative approaches on the “Whole”.