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Word Gems
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Quantum Mechanics
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In the early 1920s the phrase “quantum mechanics” came into use for the new physics. The historical development of the term helps us to understand what was meant when it was first employed.
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“Quantum” is an ancient Latin word meaning “how much.” It was famously pressed into service by Max Plank in 1900 to describe a discrete, smallest-quantity energy packet of light, later called a “photon”.
In the early 1920s, in their discussions, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born began to use the phrase “quantum mechanics” for the new physics.
A short time later, 1924, Max Born was the first to officially claim the term in his German scientific paper "Zur Quantenmechanik".
However, what does this phrase really mean? Well, of course, any comprehensive answer here would be difficult, considering the byzantine nature of the subject. Even so, as we look at the historical background of “quantum mechanics”, a crisp working-definition, I think, comes into view.
Quantum Mechanics, philosophical heir of Newtonian Mechanics
We don’t usually use the term “”Newtonian mechanics”, but maybe we should as it lays bare historical origins.
The great Newton is well known for his “three laws of motion.” They work splendidly - for large objects. All of it took us to the moon and back. “Mechanics” means “motion” and so we are justified in speaking of “Newtonian mechanics.”
The early quantum fathers were quite aware that they were usurping long-revered Newtonian “holy doctrines.” But they also knew that Newtonianism failed at the atomic and subatomic levels of reality.
A new theory of “mechanics” was required. It would be a theory addressing the motion of quantized energy packets within a strange new world of the ultra-small wherein the lauded Newtonian mechanics fell apart.
In contradistinction to “Newtonian mechanics,” they called it “quantum mechanics.”
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