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Origin of Quantum Mechanics III: The Atomic Structure and the Electron

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By Dr. Inés Urdaneta  / Physicist at  Resonance Science Foundation

In our previous article entitled Origin of Quantum Mechanics II: Black Body Radiation and Quantization of the Electromagnetic Field we saw that quantum mechanics started from the combined results of two experiments called black body radiation and photoelectric effect, which indicated that matter could only exchange energy -absorb or emit- through discrete packets, quanta of energy that were called photons, which gave a corpuscular aspect to light. Light, which is observed macroscopically as a continuous wave, must then be composed of these discrete packets of energy called photons. This allowed light and matter to exchange photons, i.e., integer units of energy.

The main interlocutor between light and atoms are the electrons that make up the atom. Roughly speaking, it is the electron inside the atom that absorbs or emits electromagnetic radiation in the material, which,...

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