The 1905 Relativity Paper and the "Light Quantum

In early 1905 Einstein developed a new theory for light, the conclusions of which earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. But, according to popular lore, Albert was a poor student, skipped classes and crammed for exams. Others continue to think of Einstein as the main opponent to Quantum Mechanics. We have all read about his disagreements with Niels Bohr and his famous quote "God does not play dice" supposedly rejecting the probabilistic nature of the new physics.

Max Planck - The Birth of Quantum Mechanics

In 1888 H. Hertz observed the electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell. It was the peak of Classical Physics whose laws seemed to have explained every phenomenon. Scientists would only have to improve the values of some constant by a few decimal places. Instead ... In just six years, from 1895 to 1900, four discoveries showed that there was a whole new world to discover, the microscopic world governed by very different laws from those of the macroscopic world observed up to then. In chronological order these were: the discovery of X rays (1985), of natural radioactivity (1896), of the electron (1897) and of the energy quantization (1900). These discoveries would have changed the world, our life and would have given rise to a whole series of extraordinary future developments; however, wanting to establish a scale of values, the discovery of the quantization of energy with Planck's introduction of the quantum of action h is undoubtedly the one of greatest value which places him right alongside Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein. In this paper I will describe how Planck arrived at this fundamental result. How it was unexpected and how the laws he derived have remained unchanged over time and not perfectible and how they have changed our perception of nature.

Studies In History and Philosophy of Science …, 2006

Volume 13, Issue 1

It is well-known that Einstein’s first paper on E=mc2 as published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 is problematic in that it suffers from the error of circular reasoning. This means that it uses as one of its premises a statement which is equivalent to the conclusion of the paper, namely, that E=mc2. This difficulty with the paper has been pointed out by many writers including Max Planck, Herbert Ives, Max Jammer and also biographers of Einstein including Gerald Holton and Arthur I. Miller. Unfortunately, the derivation is repeated today as being correct without any mention of the above criticisms of it. In view of this it seems to us worthwhile to have a clear and as simple as possible explanation of the logical difficulties associated with Einstein’s 1905 derivation, and it is to this end that this paper is written. Herewith we present a very simple treatment of the problem which makes absolutely clear the logical difficulties in Einstein’s first published work on E=mc2. KEYWORD...

2005

What were the real nature and role of the annus mirabilis, 1905, in Physics? In this paper we discuss in a historical perspective Planck’s and Einstein’s contributions as the fundamental steps in the scientific transformations (the latter with a sharper sense of methodological awareness) that led from the mechanistic and reductionist approach of 19 th century physics to the fulfillment of the formal revolution of quantum mechanics. This process underwent with further scientific breaks, in the context of the social and economic situation and the corresponding role of science.The mechanistic approach adopted in physics at the end of the 19 th century not only produced difficulties and contradictions, but resulted in the limitation of further scientific development. Chemists were the first, at that time, to perceive such limits, and introduce a thermodynamic approach, whose role in the revolution in physics must be underlined. Planck was the first physicist to introduce a procedure tha...

How to Succeed at Understanding Physics, 2012

This paper discusses the potential value of a finite, discreet, quantized mathematics and a finite existence theory evolving to a quantum collision theory of collision, emission, and absorption (CAE) to explore the Planck scale mechanism of Special Relativity in a way more realistic than the theory as described by Albert Einstein using Newtonian Objects. Nothing in this paper will refute Einstein's discovery of special relativity a consequence of the existence of photon quantum nd mass quantum (dark energy, dark matter) and their local space only property of constant speed C in the empty space of the universe as we know it. This paper will focus instead on describing the phenomenon in a more realistic way, rejecting the analogies so often used to explain the theory to beginning physics students. It does them a great disservice. This short summary is written as a response to a recent paper by Andrew Lehti "The measurement of light measured electromagnetic waves not light." This parallel discussion is necessary to clarify how easy it is to conflate special relativity with imagination, confuse fermionic particles with bosonic particles, or forget that special relativity is only about bosonic particles. It is never accurately explained by use of elevators, trains, people at the speed of light (who will die), or any Newtonian scale object to explain special relativity to students or even experienced physics professors who have it all wrong.

In the last times some scholars tried to characterize Einstein’s distinction between ‘constructive’ – i.e. deductive - theories and ‘principle’ theories, the latter ones being preferred by Einstein. Here this distinction is qualified by an accurate inspection on past physical theories. Some previous theories are surely non-deductive theories. By a mutual comparison of them a set of features - mainly the arguing according to non-classical logic - are extracted. They manifest a new ideal model of organising a theory. Einstein’s paper of 1905 on quanta, qualified by him as a ‘principle theory’, is interpreted according to this model of theory. Some unprecedented characteristic features are manifested. At the beginning of the same paper Einstein declared one more dichotomy about the kind of mathematics in theoretical physics. These two dichotomies are recognised as representing the foundations of theoretical physics. With respect to these dichotomies the choices by Einstein in the paper on quanta are the alternative choices to Newton’s ones. This fact gives reason to the ‘revolutionary’ nature that Einstein attributed to his paper. Keywords: Quanta, Einstein, principle theory, kinds of organization, kinds of mathematics