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    Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics
    Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics
    Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics
    Ebook274 pages2 hoursDover Books on Physics

    Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics

    By Max Planck

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    In 1909 the great German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Planck (1858–1947) delivered a series of eight lectures at Columbia University giving a fascinating overview of the new state of physics, which he had played a crucial role in bringing about.
    The first, third, fifth, and sixth lectures present his account of the revolutionary developments occasioned when he first applied the quantum hypothesis to blackbody radiation. The reader is given a valuable opportunity to witness Planck's thought processes both on the level of philosophical principles as well as their application to physical processes on the microscopic and macroscopic scales.
     In the second and fourth lectures Planck shows how the new ideas of statistical mechanics transformed the understanding of chemical physics. The seventh lecture discusses the principle of least action, while the final one gives an account of the theory of special relativity, of which Planck had been an early champion.
    These lectures are especially important since they reflect Planck's reconsiderations and rethinking of his original discovery of quantum theory. A new Introduction by Peter Pesic places this book in historical perspective among Planck's works and those of his contemporaries. Now available in this inexpensive edition, it will be of particular interest to students of modern physics and of the philosophy and history of science.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateJul 6, 2012
    ISBN9780486151564
    Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics
    Author

    Max Planck

    MAX KARL ERNST LUDWIG PLANCK, FRS (23 April 1858 - 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. He made many contributions to theoretical physics, but is primarily known for his role as the originator of quantum theory, which revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Munich in 1879 and taught at the University of Berlin from 1891-1928. Along with Einstein, Planck ranks as one of the two founders of modern physics. He was the acknowledged leader of German science in the 1930s, as president of the German scientific Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which in 1948 was renamed the Max Planck Society (MPS) and today includes 83 institutions representing a wide range of scientific directions. Planck died in 1947 aged 89. ALBERT EINSTEIN (14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). Einstein’s work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He is best known in popular culture for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc². He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “services to theoretical physics”, in particular his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, a pivotal step in the evolution of quantum theory. He published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works. He died in 1955 aged 76.

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      Book preview

      Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics - Max Planck

      e9780486151564_cover.jpge9780486151564_i0001.jpg

      The editor wishes to thank Stephen Brush, Gerald Holton, Allan Needell, and Curtis Wilson for their helpful advice.

      Copyright

      Copyright @ 1998 by Dover Publications, Inc.

      All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 1998, is an unabridged republication of Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics, Delivered at Columbia University in 1909, first published by The Columbia University Press in 1915, as Publication Number 3 of the Ernest Kempton Adams Fund For Physical Research. A new introduction and notes have been prepared for this edition by Peter Pesic.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Planck, Max, 1858—1947.

      [Acht vorlesungen über theoretische physik. English]

      Eight lectures on theoretical physics / Max Planck ; translated by A.P Wills; with a new introduction and notes by Peter Pesic.

      p. cm.

      Originally published: New York : Columbia University Press, 1915.

      Includes bibliographical references.

      9780486151564

      1. Physics. I. Wills, A. P. II. Title.

      QC71.P613 1998

      530—dc21

      98-10716 CIP

      Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y 11501

      PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION.

      The present book has for its object the presentation of the lectures which I delivered as foreign lecturer at Columbia University in the spring of the present year under the title: The Present System of Theoretical Physics. The points of view which influenced me in the selection and treatment of the material are given at the beginning of the first lecture. Essentially, they represent the extension of a theoretical physical scheme, the fundamental elements of which I developed in an address at Leyden entitled: The Unity of the Physical Concept of the Universe. Therefore I regard it as advantageous to consider again some of the topics of that lecture. The presentation will not and can not, of course, claim to cover exhaustively in all directions the principles of theoretical physics.

      THE AUTHOR.

      BERLIN, 1909.

      TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

      At the request of the Adams Fund Advisory Committee, and with the consent of the author, the following translation of Professor Planck’s Columbia Lectures was undertaken. It is hoped that the translation will be of service to many of those interested in the development of theoretical physics who, in spite of the inevitable loss, prefer a translated text in English to an original text in German. Since the time of the publication of the original text, some of the subjects treated, particularly that of heat radiation, have received much attention, with the result that some of the points of view taken at that time have undergone considerable modifications. The author considers it desirable, however, to have the translation conform to the original text, since the nature and extent of these modifications can best be appreciated by reference to the recent literature relating to the matters in question.

      A. P. WILLS.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION.

      INTRODUCTION

      FIRST LECTURE. - INTRODUCTION: REVERSIBILITY AND IRREVERSIBILITY.

      SECOND LECTURE. - THERMODYNAMIC STATES OF EQUILIBRIUM IN DILUTE SOLUTIONS.

      THIRD LECTURE. - THE ATOMIC THEORY OF MATTER.

      FOURTH LECTURE. - THE EQUATION OF STATE FOR A MONATOMIC GAS.

      FIFTH LECTURE. - HEAT RADIATION. ELECTRODYNAMIC THEORY.

      SIXTH LECTURE. - HEAT RADIATION. STATISTICAL THEORY.

      SEVENTH LECTURE. - GENERAL DYNAMICS. PRINCIPLE OF LEAST ACTION.

      EIGHTH LECTURE. - GENERAL DYNAMICS. PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY.

      Notes on Planck’s - Lectures on Theoretical Physics

      DOVER BOOKS ON PHYSICS

      INTRODUCTION

      Max Planck’s long life 1858—1947) encompassed the heights of scientific accomplishment, two cataclysmic wars, and the tragic deaths of his four children. Near its end he wrote: Our every starting-point must necessarily be something relative . . . . Our task is to find in all these factors and data, the absolute, the universally valid, the invariant, that is hidden in them.¹ The search for the absolute was the guiding theme of Planck’s life. It began with a revelation, the first law I knew to possess absolute, universal validity, independently from all human agency: the principle of the conservation of energy. But most of all he was drawn to the second law of thermodynamics: there are processes in nature which in no possible way can be made completely reversible.² In the concept of irreversibility Planck expressed his vision of the absolute which led him to discover quantum theory in 1900.³

      Planck’s path to the quantum began with the assumption that the irreversible increase of entropy was as absolute a law as the conservation of energy. Beginning in 1897 he turned to the problem of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation in a black body, a box with perfectly absorbing walls heated to incandescence, basically an oven with a small hole which allows some of the radiation to escape.⁴ The light from an ordinary light bulb gives a fair approximation to the radiation emerging from an idealized black body. Kirchhoff had argued in 1859 that such radiation must have certain universal, absolute qualities regardless of the material of the box. Planck decided to use an idealized model to determine these absolutes. In his thought experiment he imagines inside the box a single resonator, a pair of equal and opposite charges connected by a hypothetical spring. This resonator comes to equilibrium immersed in the field of electrodynamic radiation; Planck applied Maxwell’s equations to find the distribution of energy in the box.

      Sharp criticism by Ludwig Boltzmann caused him to change directions. Boltzmann objected that Planck’s model used only perfectly reversible fundamental processes and hence could never explain the irreversible transformation of energy into radiant heat in the glowing oven. Instead, the molecular chaos of the initial state leads to irreversibility. Planck saw the force of these arguments and, in 1898, began to apply to radiation what he had learned from Boltzmann. However, Planck still held that entropy could never decrease, even though Boltzmann thought it was possible, though unlikely.

      By October 1900 Planck’s colleagues Rubens and Kurlbaum presented important new data on the spectrum of radiation emerging from the black body. In order to fit that data Planck was forced to modify Boltzmann’s techniques by requiring that the energy of the resonator be composed of a well-defined number of equal parts or energy elements, rather than a continuously divisible quantity, as classical electromagnetic theory implied.⁵ This was the most essential point of the theory he announced on December 14, 1900, which fit the data of Planck’s experimental colleagues very well and also predicted the value of several important atomic constants.⁶ The full magnitude of his discovery went relatively unnoticed for several years, during which Planck published a fuller account of his application of thermodynamics to radiation.⁷

      By 1907 a number of physicists, including H. A. Lorentz, realized the significance of Planck’s work. Albert Einstein used Planck’s quantum postulate in an even more radical way in his light-quantum paper of 1905. In 1908 Lorentz invited Planck to Leiden to lecture on The Unity of the Physical World Picture.⁸ In this lecture Planck began to give a deeper account of his quantum theory based on his assertion that in order to reveal the absolute any trace of anthropomorphism had to be removed from physical theory.

      In 1909 Planck delivered a series of eight lectures at Columbia University giving an overview of the new situation in physics, in which he had played such a signal part, and carrying further the ideas he had broached at Leiden. Lorentz had already visited Columbia to lecture in 1906; at the time Planck came his ideas were just beginning to enter the curriculum of American universities, particularly at the University of Chicago under Robert A. Millikan’s aegis.⁹ Planck’s Columbia lectures began on April 23 and were given over four consecutive weekends. Each Friday a general lecture preceded a more technical lecture the following day. These lectures, which he repeated in Leipzig in 1910, give a fascinating perspective on how he understood the new departures which he had initiated in 1900.

      The first, third, fifth, and sixth lectures present his account of these developments. The reader is given an invaluable opportunity to witness Planck’s thought processes on the level of philosophical principles as well as in their application to the physical processes on the microscopic and macroscopic scales. Throughout, he calls attention to anything anthropomorphic and moves toward invariant, universal principles. He shows the centrality of statistical ideas in purifying thermodynamics of the limitations of ordinary practical applications. From this, he points to the distinction between reversible and irreversible processes as the touchstone of the new physics. For Planck, the unavoidability of irreversible processes leads toward the introduction of atomicity at the fundamental level of physics. Nowhere else in his writings does Planck present his argument in a more trenchant or compelling form.

      In the second and fourth lectures Planck shows how these new ideas of statistical mechanics have transformed the understanding of the chemical physics of dilute solutions and of monatomic gases. Planck especially acknowledges the seminal work of Josiah Willard Gibbs not only as preeminent in America but also as one of the most famous theoretical physicists of all times. The seventh lecture turns to the principle of least action, which Planck considers as essential to all reversible processes. His reflections concern the relation of these processes to general irreversible processes and show how he attempts to reconcile them. The final lecture is an account of the theory of special relativity, which Planck had early championed and whose creator was still working at the Swiss Patent Office.¹⁰ Soon after Einstein had published his seminal paper (1905) Planck already discerned its profound importance as a revolution in thought comparable only to that brought about by the Copernican system.¹¹ He found in relativity theory not relativism but instead the highest expression of the invariant, the kind of eternal law that physics can attain when it purges itself of what is merely human and limited.

      Planck’s reflective prose clarifies the philosophical issues underlying his presentation. Though its overarching laws are absolute, nature’s microscopic disorder implies that what happens today can never be undone. Written during a period when Planck was reconsidering his work, the lectures also show his critical attitude towards classical physics.¹² Though he hated to introduce fundamental discontinuities¹³ Planck did count the states of the radiation inside the black body in a radically new way. Although he used Boltzmann’s statistical techniques he insisted on an elementary disorder which prevents any possible decrease of entropy. Holding to this absolute sense of the. second law and to the impossibility of eliminating this disorder Planck went beyond Boltzmann by treating the modes of radiation as wholly indistinguishable.

      Planck’s counting exemplifies a new concept of identicality, which joins equality of observable physical quantities (like mass or charge) to a radical indistinguishability that can confuse space-time histories.¹⁴ This is a profound theme of the quantum theory that Ladislas Natanson and Paul Ehrenfest were among the first to notice (1911).¹⁵ Though Einstein had been bold in grasping the implications of the quantum hypothesis, he remained conservative in wishing to follow the course of individual atoms and forecast their activities, at least in principle.¹⁶ Ironically, Planck’s devotion to the absolute did not make him join Einstein in requiring this fundamental determinism. Planck looked to certain fundamental laws, especially of thermodynamics, more than to mechanically distinguishable atoms with individual histories. At the behest of those laws Planck was ready to suspend the identity of individual atoms, even though he was entering a new realm with whose strangeness he would long struggle. After all, from his youth he had surmised that the realm of the absolute contained more than classical atomic physics dreamt of.¹⁷

      Planck’s lectures are imbued with his intense integrity and thoughtfulness. This cautious, conservative man made the first steps towards a new view of the world. Altogether one feels in the presence of a great and admirable mind. The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshipper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart. ¹⁸ Thus Einstein spoke about his friend, praising his ardent quest for the pre-established harmony hidden behind the things of this world. These lectures allow us to hear Planck describe what he thought he was doing and how he viewed the whole scene of physics in that first amazing decade of the twentieth century.

      Peter Pesic

      FIRST LECTURE.

      INTRODUCTION: REVERSIBILITY AND IRREVERSIBILITY.

      Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: The cordial invitation, which the President of Columbia University extended to me to deliver at this prominent center of American science some lectures in the domain of theoretical physics, has inspired in me a sense of the high honor and distinction thus conferred upon me and, in no less degree, a consciousness of the special obligations which, through its acceptance, would be imposed upon me. If I am to count upon meeting in some measure your just expectations, I can succeed only through directing your attention to the branches of my science with which I myself have been specially and deeply concerned, thus exposing myself to the danger that my report in certain respects shall thereby have somewhat too subjective a coloring.

      From those points of view which appear to me the most striking, it is my desire to depict for you in these lectures the present status of the system of theoretical physics. I do not say: the present status of theoretical physics; for to cover this far broader subject, even approximately, the number of lecture hours at my disposal would by no means suffice. Time limitations forbid the extensive consideration of the details of this great field of learning; but it will be quite possible to develop for you, in bold outline, a representation of the system as a whole, that is, to give a sketch of the fundamental laws which rule in the physics of today, of the most important hypotheses employed, and of the great ideas which have recently forced themselves into the subject. I will often gladly endeavor to go into details, but not in the sense of a thorough treatment of the subject, and only with the object of making the general laws more clear, through appropriate specially chosen examples. I shall select these examples from the most varied branches of physics.

      If we wish to obtain a correct understanding of the achievements of theoretical physics, we must guard in equal measure against the mistake of overestimating these achievements, and on the other hand, against the corresponding mistake of underestimating them. That the second mistake is actually often made, is shown by the circumstance that quite recently voices have been loudly raised maintaining the bankruptcy and, débâcle of the whole of natural science.

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