The Quantum Mechanical Adjunct
by Chris Cumo THIS YEAR MARKS the centennial of Max Planck’s discovery that energy is not continuous but comes in discrete units called quanta. To borrow an analogy from mathematics, it is as though Planck proposed that all numbers consist only of integers with no continuum of fractions to link any two integers. A quantum of energy is so tiny that it can only describe the behavior of the innards of an atom. That is, quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that Planck began in 1900, operates only at the subatomic level, just as the adjunct lives only in the subacademic realm. She is neither […]
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