When Max Planck came up with thenotionof the quantum at the turn of the 20th century, he couldn't justify it. Nevertheless, the idea that energy couldn't be split infinitely many times - that there was an indivisible quantum of energy - was the only way he could fit the observed spectrum of radiation from ahotbodytoa mathematical law. This ruse was, he later said, "an act of despair".
展开▼