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CRC Press eBooks

PHYSICS

Donald E Simanek, John. Holden

Published Oct 1, 2001• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

At the close of the 19th century many physicists confidently assumed that nothing fundamentally new remained be discovered. Physicists were confident that if all aspects of any physical system were measured to perfect accuracy then physical laws could also be known perfectly and the future of that system could be mathematically predicted exactly. So all that was left for physicists to do was to improve measurements, pushing toward ever more decimal places of accuracy.

DOI
10.1201/9781420033564-6

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At the close of the 19th century many physicists confidently assumed that nothing fundamentally new remained be discovered. Physicists were confident that if all aspects of any physical system were measured to perfect accuracy then physical laws could also be known perfectly and the future of that system could be mathematically predicted exactly. So all that was left for physicists to do was to improve measurements, pushing toward ever more decimal places of accuracy.
The discoveries of modern physics have, as we know, brought about a significant change in our scientific picture of the world, in that they have shattered the absolute validity of natural law and made it relative. Natural laws are statistical truths, which means that they are completely valid only when we are dealing with macrophysical quantities. In the realm of very small quantities prediction becomes uncertain, if not impossible, because very small quantities no longer behave in accordance with the known natural laws.
Although many of the solitons described in previous chapters were discovered and studied in the 20th century, they could have been discovered and understood by physicists of the previous century. What I have in mind, of course, is the distinction between classical (19th century) and quantum physics (20th century). It happened that the quantum revolution in physics started at the frontier of the two centuries. At the end of 1900 the German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) boldly introduced the notion of quanta of energy in the processes of emission of light by atoms. He also introduced a new fundamental constant in physics, the Planck constant h . The significance of this revolutionary step was not recognized until much later. Planck himself did not realize that he had started one of the greatest revolutions in physics. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
In the mid-19th century, both the laws of mechanics and thermodynamics were known, and both appeared fundamental. This was changed by Boltzmann and Gibbs, who showed that thermodynamics can be *derived*, by applying mechanics to very large systems, and making simple statistical assumptions about their behavior. Similarly, when Quantum Mechanics (QM) was first discovered, it appeared to require two sets of postulates: one about the deterministic evolution of wavefunctions, and another about the probabilistic measurement process. Here again, the latter is derivable from the former: by applying unitary evolution to large systems (apparatuses, observers and environment), and making simple assumptions about their behavior, one can derive all the features of quantum measurement. We set out to demonstrate this claim, using a simple and explicit model of a quantum experiment, which we hope will be clear and compelling to the average physicist.
At the end of the 19th century, with the development of Newton's classical mechanics and Maxwell's electromagnetism, a great number of individuals believed that the laws of physics had reached the point of perfection. Physicists like Pierre-Simon Laplace even thought that Newtonian mechanics could be used to calculate the future. However, the "dark clouds" such as the Michelson-Morley experiment and black body radiation demonstrated the flaws of the classical theory. With the efforts of quantum mechanics pioneers such as Planck, Einstein, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg, the discipline of quantum mechanics has gradually developed and has become the key to opening the door to the microscopic world. This paper demonstrates the cracks that occurred in classical physics at the end of the 19th century, and then illustrates the birth of the quantum mechanics and some of the most important concepts of it. Finally, some cutting-edge technologies related to quantum are introduced.
In classical physics there is, and always will be, a lack of precision in measurement. We cannot measure any quantity with absolute accuracy so any size, any weight, any velocity, any position, any time must always be stated within certain limits of error. Today we can make such measurements extremely accurately, but not with infinite accuracy. Yet this, though not entirely a practical problem, is practical to the extent that we can always aspire to achieve an accuracy which is sufficient for the purpose in hand. In theory we can go on refining our measurements indefinitely. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.