Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 7

After receiving several letters from the secretary, Plank found that the addresses on the envelopes all came from the same country.

He frowned and asked again: "Why are these all from Ben? Are there any letters from China? The China that produces tea and porcelain!"

"China? I remembered that it was sent with the telegram this morning. There was indeed a letter from there," said the secretary with a slight sarcasm. "Professor, this is the first time I have seen a Chinese send Academic yearbook, the content is probably similar to those Indian physics papers that have been sent tirelessly one after another to prove that Newton’s laws of motion are wrong, so I just made my own claim and directly withheld it and didn’t send it to you.”

"Find me this letter immediately, I want to read it now!"

The secretary didn't know why the shaggy bald old professor lost his temper suddenly, so he could only leave the office resentfully, and returned after a long while with a thick envelope.

"Professor, this should be the letter."

The secretary learned a good lesson this time, and quietly backed out after handing in the envelope. He didn't want to be a pond fish who was caught in an unknown fire again.

The date on the postmark is November 1922, 11, which means that this letter has gone through more than 20 days of drifting, crossing the Pacific Ocean, Malacca, Indian Ocean, Suez, and sitting in the rumbling steam of white smoke after landing in Marseilles The train came to this office in Berlin after several twists and turns.

After opening the envelope that smelled of the sea, pulling out the folded letter paper, and laying it flat on the desk, Planck saw the title of the paper, "Another Effect Between Light and Electrons: On Monochromatic Gamma A Quantum Physical Explanation for the Change of Properties of Rays Scattered by Matter".

"In 1887, when German physicist Heinrich Hertz was studying electromagnetic waves, he accidentally discovered that ultraviolet rays irradiating metal electrodes can help generate electric sparks.

"Eighteen years later, in 18, Dr. Albert Einstein published a paper entitled "A Heuristic Viewpoint on the Generation and Transformation of Light", which introduced the concept of 'light quantum' and successfully gave Theoretical explanation of this experimental phenomenon known as the 'photoelectric effect'. Dr. Einstein was awarded last year's Nobel Prize in Physics just this year for this feat..."

Seeing such a past event written at the beginning of the paper, it immediately brought back a dusty memory of Planck for a long time.

In 1905, Planck had been working as an editor for ten years in the editorial department of the Annals of Physics.

One day, he received a contribution from Albert Einstein, a small staff member of the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland. The topic was to explain the photoelectric effect with the light quantum hypothesis.

In fact, Planck initially opposed Einstein's light quantum hypothesis because he was unwilling to give up Maxwell's electrodynamics and stubbornly believed that light is a continuous wave, not individual particles.

He refuted Einstein in this way: "The theory of the king's light quantum has set back the theory of physics not by decades, but by hundreds of years! Huygens has already proposed that light is a continuous wave rather than the particles that Newton said. !"

But even so, Planck still agreed to publish five papers including this one in the "Annals of Physics", which made a good story in the miracle year of 1905.

That's right, the "Annual Review of Physics" at this time does not have the evil peer review of later generations. It only needs to pass the editor's preliminary screening before it can be published.

It was not until the first Solvay Conference in 1911 that Planck was basically persuaded by Einstein and accepted the latter's light quantum hypothesis.

Unexpectedly, time flies by so quickly, and I have known Einstein for nearly 20 years.

After recovering, Planck continued to look at the paper in his hand.

"In 1904, when the British physicist Arthur Ive was studying the absorption and scattering properties of gamma rays, he discovered that the gamma rays scattered by materials such as iron or aluminum plates tend to be stronger than the incident rays' Softer. After further experiments and research by David Florance and Joseph Gray and others, it was finally obtained that the properties of monochromatic gamma rays will change after being scattered. The larger the scattering angle, The softer the scattered rays are, it has nothing to do with the material of the scattering object'.

"However, what kind of theory should be used to accurately and properly explain this phenomenon, the physics community has been at odds over the years, and no unified consensus has been reached.

"Also 18 years after Ive discovered the gamma ray phenomenon, the author started from Dr. Einstein's light quantum theory and tried to give a quantum physics explanation for this phenomenon..."

Seeing this, Planck frowned slightly again.

The Chinese specifically emphasized the 18 years twice in the paper. Is it implying that his achievements can be compared with Einstein?

In Planck's impression, Chinese people are gentle, refined and easy-going gentlemen like Xia Yuanzhen and Cai Yuanpei. Why is this young man so arrogant?

When Chen Muwu first wrote this paragraph, he really meant something like "I am a madman from Chu, Feng Ge laughs at Kong Qiu".

Since he already knew that his theory was correct, why did he pretend to be a grandson?

The Chinese people have been gentle, courteous and frugal for too long, so they will be misunderstood as weak by white-skinned foreign devils and bullied on their heads.

With a little displeasure, Planck continued to read the rest of the paper.

"The author tentatively regards the light quantum (das Lichtquant) mentioned by Dr. Einstein as a kind of particle, and named it 'photon (das Photon)', the root of which comes from the ancient Greek word for light φ (phs) and φωτ (phōtós).”

That's right, the name photon, which seems to be taken for granted in later generations, has not yet appeared at this time.

Photon?Could light really be a particle?

Planck muttered to himself.

"The theory of the photoelectric effect reveals that photons have energy. If it is considered that photons have energy, they also have their own momentum. When they enter the scattering matter and collide with the free electrons in it, the following derivation can be made:..."

The idea that light quanta have momentum is not new.

In 1909, Einstein proposed at an international conference that light quanta should have momentum.

In 1916, he even gave the momentum formula of light quantum in the paper "Quantum Discourse on Radiation", p=h/λ.

However, this paper may be the first time that the momentum of light quanta is used for calculation in specific examples.

How did he combine the two, was it a keen intuition, or was it a mistake?

"From this we can draw a conclusion: when photons are emitted from the photon source and enter the scattering material, they mainly interact with the electrons in them. When the frequency of the incident light is low and the energy of the photons is of the same order of magnitude as the electron binding energy, then The photoelectric effect is mainly produced, and atoms absorb the energy of photons to generate ionization.

"When the frequency of the incident light is quite large and the energy of the photons far exceeds the binding energy of the electrons, the electrons in the material can be regarded as free electrons. At this time, the photons can be considered to scatter the free electrons, which is the specific discussion in this paper. This effect. This also explains why this scattering is independent of the properties of the material.  …”

(End of this chapter)