100 years looking at how much.

2000/12/15 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Fisika
• Historia

It was one hundred years since the German scientist Max Planck published the concept of how much. Physics developed from there is the basis of

current technology. A famous late century experiment (black body radiation) successfully explained it. For this he had to define the concept. The concept had to do with the nature of energy. A particle cannot have any energy. Just as when one is placed on

a ladder, the energy also has steps. Particles must also be at a certain level, either above or below. And to jump from one level of energy to another you have to catch or give the exact amount of energy. It seems a simple concept, but, as Albert Einstein later demonstrated, it implied new total implications. Planck and Einstein won two Nobel prizes for clarifying these theories, in 1918 and 1925 respectively. Quantum theory went

out of hand. New ways were worked that Einstein and both did not accept. The Danish Niels Bohr gave quantum treatment to the atom. In the short term, the new generations of physicists developed a mechanics based on probabilistic analysis. Everything that was less than the atom had to be studied with that physics. The surprising quantum mechanics were underway. And so far it is not an experiment with opposite results. He died

in 2000. That same year, in Bell's labs, three American physicists invented the transsistor. With a quantum effect, this device amplifies and controls any electrical signal. In fact, computers and all electronic devices are applications of transsistors. But it is not the only application. The laser used in so many fields is also a direct consequence of quantum theory. Some sophisticated, others very close. Just remember with the CD readers we have at home. Both most types of chemical compound analysis (doping control to name a few) and many of those used in medicine (magnetic resonance, for example) are based on spectroscopy and therefore on quantum mechanics. Soon, when the doctor reviews our stomach with a camera the size of a pill, we will have another great reason to celebrate Planck's invention.