Black Body Radiation Essay Example

Blackbody radiation is the electro-magnetic radiation emerging from a small hole in a perfectly black box containing electromagnetic radiation at a high temperature. Scientists were interested in setting standards for the electric and thus measured the distribution of the total electromagnetic energy in a black box among the different wavelengths of the light. But not until Max Planck, at the turn of the century, was a single mathematical formula for the observed distribution of the energy among the emittedwavelengthssupposed.

Only by introducing a new assumption, that the energy of the radiation does not act continuously, into his mathematics in essence Planck had discovered the quantum structure of electromagnetic radiation. In 1905 Einstein attempted to resolve the conflict between wave and particle theories by demonstrating that part of Planck's formula can arise only if electromag