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Swiss patent office, 1905

Narrator: ``In 1902 Philipp E.A. von Lenard discovered that you can't excite electrons out of a metal using low frequency light, no matter how high you turn up the intensity. But if you use even a little bit of higher frequency light, out pop lots of electrons. So it isn't the power of the electromagnetic radiation, it's the frequency.

``Meanwhile, isolated from the scientific community and twiddling his thumbs in a Swiss patent office, we have a bit of a flunky. He had some problems in high school, his friends dragged him through his undergrad finals, he couldn't get into grad school when he tried, and finally couldn't land an academic position anywhere. He was poking away at a few problems here and there, in between stamping his approval on new and improved mousetraps. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a thing or two . . . or three.''

Einstein: [writing on blackboard]

E=ma2 . . . no, E=mb2 . . . no . . . .

Leaves relativity on side board, fixes up photoelectric effect behind demo. Emphasizes quantization of radiation, doesn't like it.


next up previous
Next: McGill, 1905 Up: The Dreams Stuff is Made Of Previous: Hot Atoms
Jess H. Brewer
2000-01-23