Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Physics Non Progress Report

Been doing a lot of reading of papers written at the inception of quantum mechanics from a collection " Sources of Quantum Mechanics, published by Dover. It leads off with a paper by Einstein concerning how the proper spectrum of radiation from a gas in thermal equilibrium can be derived from quantum absorption and emission. Right now I am in the midst of a paper by Bohr which seems to be an attempt to relate quantum emissions to classical electrodynamics/mechanics of charged oscillators. Trying to relate the classical emissions expected from charged oscillators to emissions, and absorption of quanta from transitions between the quantized "stationary" energy states is a tall order. I expect to have to read this paper more than once to see if Bohr achieves anything like this. I need to get through this and a few more papers before reaching Heisenberg's major paper on some of the fundamental "principles" of quantum mechanics. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

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