Word: quanta
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...years ago that another brainy German, Max Planck, discovered that atoms do not radiate light continuously or in indiscriminate amounts, but in separate pulses and uniform quantities which were subsequently called quanta. Planck's constant, h, is equal to .00000000000000000000000000655 erg-seconds. For any sort of light the energy multiplied by the period of vibration is always equal to h. To a physicist grouping within the atom, h and the quantum mechanics which have grown up around it are as important as bait, hook & line to a fisherman...
...colorless substance called proto-chlorophyll. Proto-chlorophyll accumulates in certain cells of leaves called chloroplasts where it comes in contact with carbon dioxide in the air. When the sun is shining a molecule of proto-chlorophyll, stimulated by an atom of magnesium which holds it together, absorbs four quanta of energy from a sunbeam. The extra energy enables the proto-chlorophyll to attract carbon dioxide, kick off the oxygen which it does not require, absorb the carbon. At that instant the colorless proto-chlorophyll becomes chlorophyll and makes the grass green...
Along came Max Planck to knock this assumption into a cocked hat with his discovery of bundles and jumps. In 1900 Planck announced that radiant energy could only be propagated in tiny, indivisible bundles which he called quanta. Furthermore these bundles did not proceed through space continuously, but by jumps. It was not long before experimenters were finding this lumpiness and jerkiness everywhere. Albert Einstein used it to explain photoelectric action. Subatomic explorers found that atoms had only a fixed number of orbits in which their electrons might travel; that the electrons jumped from one orbit to another with emission...
...thyroid enlargement. To the thyroid function cheery Dr. Crile has tried to apply his electronic theory of life (TIME, Dec. 5. et ante), a theory to which his colleagues listen with aseptic indulgence. Said Dr. Crile in Memphis: "What we eat is radiation. Our food is so much quanta of energy, not in that inert word calories, but quanta. The sun shines upon our food products, and the sun shines secondarily within us. in the body's protoplasm. Energy contained in food is put there by the sun's radiation on the atoms of plants. Atoms...
...alpha particles, and they have great penetrating powers. They can travel through a mile of air, several feet of lead. They apparently weigh 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to the ounce. It is only by the finest of discernment that they can be distinguished from unentangled quanta of energy. Streams of them may be what Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan calls cosmic rays. But Dr. Chadwick doubts that. Neutrons may be, because they have opposite poles, the long sought units of magnetism. Whatever they are, neutrons are fine things for physicists to play with and to guess about...