Revisiting Max Planck’s idea: Planck’s Law, Casimir force and Planck’s constant
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31349/RevMexFisE.20.020203Keywords:
Planck’s law; Casimir force; energy quantization; Planck’s constantAbstract
Max Planck (1858-1947) is one of the most renowned scientists in physics. He is even a commonplace character in humanities courses since he was one of the European scientists who most influenced the opinion and perspective of European society. This work intends to present a pedagogical introduction to the quantization of energy, Planck's most valuable contribution to science. This is an important topic that is frequently included in physics and engineering curricula but is often presented in a vague and forced manner. This work seeks a more intuitive introduction to the quantization of energy by presenting Planck's law and the Casimir force, along with a practical activity that students can perform to directly measure Planck's constant and achieve a more cohesive understanding of the concepts
References
J. Franck, Max Planck: 1858-1947, Science 107 (1948) 534.
F. M. Serry, D. Walliser, and G. J. Maclay, The role of the Casimir effect in the static deflection and stiction of membrane
strips in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Journal of Applied Physics 84 (1998) 2501.
H. B. Chan, et al., Quantum mechanical actuation of micro-electromechanical systems by the Casimir force, Science 291
(2001) 1941.
S. K. Lamoreaux, The Casimir force: background, experiments, and applications, Reports on progress in Physics 68 (2004) 201.
M. Planck, On the law of the energy distribution in the normal spectrum, Ann. Phys 4 (1901) 1.
M. J. Klein, Max Planck and the beginnings of the quantum theory, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 1 (1961) 459.
H. Kragh, Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary, Physics World 13 (2000) 31.
B. E. Saleh and M. C. Teich, Fundamentals of photonics (John Wiley & sons, 2019).
S.Weinberg, Lectures on quantum mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
A. Yariv and P. Yeh, Photonics: optical electronics in modern communications (Oxford university press, 2007).
A. D. Aczel, Entanglement: the greatest mystery in physics (Raincoast Books, 2002).
P. Ball, Popular physics myth is all at sea, Nature 2008 (2006)
K. A. Milton, The Casimir effect: physical manifestations of zero-point energy (World Scientific, 2001).
T. M. Apostol, An elementary view of Euler’s summation formula, The American Mathematical Monthly 106 (1999) 409
S. M. Sze, Y. Li, and K. K. Ng, Physics of semiconductor devices (John wiley & sons, 2021).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Rafael Quintero-Bermudez, Mario Alan Quiroz-Juárez, Jorge Luis Dominguez-Juárez, Rafael Quintero Torres
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the Revista Mexicana de Física E right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
