Atomic mechanics
In the last few chapters we have treated the essential ideas necessary for an understanding of most of the important phenomena of light—or electromagnetic radiation in general. (We have left a few special topics for next year. Specifically, the theory of the index of dense materials and total internal reflection.) What we have dealt with is called the “classical theory” of electric waves, which turns out to be a completely adequate description of nature for a large number of effects.  We have not had to worry yet about the fact that light energy comes in lumps or “photons.” We would like to take up as our next subject the problem of the behavior of relatively large pieces of matter—their mechanical and thermal properties, for instance. In discussing these, we will find that the “classical” (or older) theory fails almost immediately, because matter is really made up of atomic-sized particles. Still, we will deal only with the classical part, because that is the only part that we can understand using the classical mechanics we have been learning. But we shall not be very successful. We shall find that in the case of matter, unlike the case of light, we shall be in difficulty relatively soon. We could, of course, continuously skirt away from the atomic effects, but we shall instead interpose here a short excursion in which we will describe the basic ideas of the quantum properties of matter, i.e., the quantum ideas of atomic physics, so that you will have some feeling for what it is we are leaving out. For we will have to leave out some important subjects that we cannot avoid coming close to. So we will give now the introduction to the subject of quantum mechanics, but will not be able actually to get into the subject until much later. “Quantum mechanics” is the description of the behavior of matter in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen. Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but then it was discovered, as we have seen here, that it behaves like a wave. Later, however (in the beginning of the twentieth century) it was found that light did indeed sometimes behave like a particle. Historically, the electron, for example, was thought to behave like a particle, and then it was found that in many respects it behaved like a wave. So it really behaves like neither. Now we have given up. We say: “It is like neither.” There is one lucky break, however—electrons behave just like light. The quantum behavior of atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and so on) is the same for all, they are all “particle waves,” or whatever you want to call them. So what we learn about the properties of electrons (which we shall use for our examples) will apply also to all “particles,” including photons of light. The gradual accumulation of information about atomic and small-scale behavior during the first quarter of the 20th century, which gave some indications about how small things do behave, produced an increasing confusion which was finally resolved in 1926 and 1927 by Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Born. They finally obtained a consistent description of the behavior of matter on a small scale. We take up the main features of that description in this chapter. Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects. We know how large objects will act, but things on a small scale just do not act that way. So we have to learn about them in a sort of abstract or imaginative fashion and not by connection with our direct experience. In this chapter we shall tackle immediately the basic element of the mysterious behavior in its most strange form. We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot explain the mystery in the sense of “explaining” how it works. We will tell you how it works. In telling you how it works we will have told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics.