Word: quanta
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...iridescent ideal- is to construct a unified system which will represent in exact terms all the phenomena of nature. Quantum mechanics is an exact, mathematical system for dealing with atoms and radiation. So named because its fundamental principle is that energy is exchanged in separate, indivisible bundles called quanta, quantum mechanics has been powerfully developed by such giants of physics as Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Dirac (Nobel Prizewinners all). It has interpreted the laws of radiation, the laws of specific heat, the details of atomic, molecular and X-ray spectra...
...British journal Nature fortnight ago, Dr. Svedberg reported experiments on molecules of hemocyanin (molecular weight, 6,740,000 units), a blue pigment from the blood of mollusks. He and his co-workers at the University of Upsala bombarded the hemocyanin particles with quanta of energy in the form of ultraviolet light. Certain wave lengths of the bombarding radiation split the blood pigment molecules into halves. This was like splitting inorganic atoms in a high-voltage atom-smasher...
...physics. The Mechanical Explanation of nature occupies the opening chapters, and how it was devised by Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and others to account for phenomena as they saw them. Next is detailed the new facts about light and magnetics, and its replacement by the current theories of four dimensions, quanta, relativity, and the time-space continuum. Each problem is outlined as it arises in a logical approach, and each theory gets its day in court, with the difficulties that led to its formation, the events it explains, and the new difficulties that lead to its revision and rejection...
...Einstein believes that Physics is in a bad dilemma at present, with one leg in the Field Theory and the other buried in Quanta. Investigation into particles of matter leads from descriptions of events in time and space to probability waves, and the problem of placing such waves in the field concept of space is a major one. Suppose that a solution is found; in what way are we better off? Dr. Einstein is not sure. "In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees...
...Quanta. Having traced the evolution of physics through Relativity, the co-authors close their volume with a discussion of the Quantum Theory. Max Planck provided the first experiments and Einstein the early theory which regards energy as released and received not in continuous flow but in separate little bundles called quanta. A quantum of light is called a photon. Einstein used early Quantum Theory to explain photoelectric action-the ability of photons to knock electrons out of metals...