The Ultraviolet Catastrophe: How does light really behave?

When objects get very hot, they emit lots of radiation but the classical theory predicted that hot objects would radiate infinite energy which they do not, therefore scientists had to revise physics.

First, Max Planck came along and proposed that if the radiated energy had been quantized (in energy chunks) as opposed to continuously distributed, then the theory would match the experiments. Planck proposed quantization but had no explanation for why this might be physically motivated.

This film was created by #WWU student Michael Dymek for the summer #SciComm course Phys/Comm 297 final project.

Students with little to no video editing experience or storytelling training turned into video producers in six weeks. We hope you enjoy this science story as much as we enjoyed making it. Spark Science host and instructor of this course, Dr. Barber DeGraaff, is very proud of each of them.

[rip]

I don’t see in the formula a drop in the curve. It seems to be linear. Please clear up why the drop on the curve at that frequency.

[wambe]

Most of these so called teachers don’t seem to understand the problem itself! How does quantization explains the lack of massive emissions of ultraviolet even at low temperatures…