Word: planck
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Frivolous Jumps. In the neatly appropriate year of 1900, a discovery was made that was to knock the props from under classical physics. In his Berlin laboratory, Max Planck, a 42-year-old German physicist, was trying to describe mathematically the emission of light by glowing bodies. No one had done it and Planck could not do it either-until, in a sort of desperation, he assumed that light does not flow in a smooth stream, as everyone supposed, but in tiny, indivisible bursts...
Three of the four basic values, says Gamow, have already been discovered. They are: 1) the speed of light (the highest possible velocity); 2) Planck's Constant (the smallest possible value of mechanical action); 3) Boltzmann's Constant (having to do with the kinetic energy of gases...
...fourth corner post of physics, still unknown, Gamow says, will probably be an "elementary length" which will divide space into "smallest" units, just as Planck's Constant divided the flow of energy into "smallest" bursts (the "quantum" of the quantum theory). Gamow suspects that this missing length may turn out to be about 10 -13 centimeter (one ten-trillionth of a centimeter). A length close to this shows up as the radius of an electron, and as the effective range of forces in the atomic nuclei. "All kinds of physical considerations," says Gamow, "become senseless when...
Triumphant Life. Planck himself had triumphs, too. He became rector of the University of Berlin, and won the 1918 Nobel Prize for Physics. But when the Nazis came into power, German scientists with Jewish blood (including Einstein) were hounded out of the country. Many "Aryan" scientists fled too; but old Max Planck stayed behind. In 1934 (he was 76), he went in person to Hitler, to demand an end of Jewish persecution. Hitler turned his back while the old man talked. The following year, Planck was removed from the presidency of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (a scientific society). When...
After the fall of Germany, Planck lived in a two-room apartment in the university town of Gottingen, where he died last week, surrounded by the ruins of his world...