Max Planck :: essays research papers

Max PlanckOn April 23, 1858 Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany.He was the sixth child of a law professor at the University of Kiel. At the ageof nine his interest in physical science and mathematics was developed by his teacherHermann Muller. When he graduated at the age of seventeen he decided to choosephysics over music for his career. Although he is know for physics he was anexceptional pianist who had acquired the gift of being able to hear absolutepitch. His favorite works of music were known to be Schubert and Brahms.Entering the University of Munich in 1874 he got little inspiration and wasunimpressed at the University of Berlin which was between the years of 1877 and1878. He in turn did independent studies primarily on Rudolf Clausius writingsof thermodynamics which invigorate him and in July 1879 he received his doctoraldegree at the age of twenty-one. He became a lecturer at the University ofMunich. His father helped him be promoted to associate pro fessor at Kiel bymeans of professional connections. At the age of thirty he was promoted to fullprofessor at the University of Berlin.After he decided to come a theoretical physicist he started a quest forabsolute laws. His favorite absolute law was the law of the conservation ofenergy which was the first law of thermodynamics that express that you could takeany equal amount of energy and transform it into the same equal amount of energyideally, meaning no energy was lost. The second law of thermodynamics led himto discover the quantum of action or Plancks constant h. How he came upon hisformula for quantum mechanics well be explained as follows. Planck saw thatblackbody radiation acted in an absolute sense because it was defined byKirchhoff as a substance that could absorb almost all radiating energy and emitall that it had take up perfectly which is associated with the first law ofthermodynamics. By using various experiments and theoretical failures manyscientists tried to find the spectral energy distribution to try and course adiagram of a curve that showed the amount of radiation given off at differentfrequencies for a blackbody with a given temperature. then using Wiens lawwhich worked out for high frequencies but didnt work for low, he saw arelationship with the mathematics of the entropy of the radiation in the high- oftenness waves in correlation to the low frequency waves and he guessed if hecombined the two in the simplest way that he would get a formula that link to