Word: quantas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...whirl of tiny, indivisible units called atoms. Plato disagreed, saw it as a symmetrical expression of mathematical relations between five basic structures. Then came the theory of light radiating in continuous waves. German Physicist Max Planck overturned that in 1900; he said energy comes in discontinuous particles-or quanta-and Einstein followed him with the idea that light can be thought of as both particle and wave...
...last week's meeting Dr. Max W. Lund of the Office of Naval Research took stock of man's abilities and compared them with those of machines. Man's sight and hearing are good, he said. The eye responds to as little as three or four quanta of light, and the ear can hear sounds only slightly louder than the ghostly rustle of air molecules clashing together. Both human sight and hearing apparatus, said Lund, are close to theoretical perfection within their class...
...continuous unity: gravity and electro-magnetism must, therefore, have a common source. He was in a minority, for Planck's famed Quantum Theory, which Einstein himself did so much to develop, and which many modern scientists accept, suggests that the physical universe is made up of small particles (quanta) that are governed not by some orderly causality but by chance...
...propagation of electromagnetic waves. He had no success, which was probably just as well. Fermi lived his professional life in the strange new world of mathematical physics; Laura did not try to follow him into his abstract jungle. She learned how to appreciate her husband in spite of quanta and nucleons...
Hardly anyone accepted Einstein's challenge. More popular with physicists was a view derived from quantum mechanics, which holds that the universe is made up of small particles (quanta) that behave, individually, as if they were governed by mere chance. Einstein does not accept this. "I cannot believe," he remarked, "that God plays dice with the cosmos...