A Story Of The Accidental Birth Of Quantum Mechanics

Principle 3: Many fundamental physical properties can only exist in discrete values rather than a continuous range.

From left to right: W. Nernst, A. Einstein, Planck, R. A. Millikan, and von Laue at a dinner given by von Laue in Berlin on 11 November 1931 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

This story was originally published in “Into Quantum”, a Substack publication where we learn everything about Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing from scratch.

It is 1897.

The famous physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, famously concludes:

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

And if you were a physicist who lived in the late 19th century, you might have felt this way as well.

Isaac Newton’s laws of motion had stood the test of time for over 200 years. They could near-accurately describe planetary motion, falling objects, and the mechanics of everyday life.

James Clerk Maxwell’s equations unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single framework.

Statistical mechanics had been developed and it explained how temperature, pressure, and entropy result from atomic motion.

Everyone felt that the precise measurements were the way forward to refining the existing theories rather than…