On Thursday, August 16, 2001, at 05:35 PM, Jim Choate wrote:

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Anonymous wrote:

...

The photon discussion a few weeks back got me reading about cavity radiation. I'm puzzled. Perhaps somebody can point me in the right direction.

For those who don't already know, cavity radiation is a surprising phenomenon which required quantum theory to model.

Actually statistical mechanics, not quite the same thing as quantum theory. But you can't talk about QT w/o SM.

No, Anonymous was perfectly correct in saying quanta were required to understand black body radiation. Planck got the Nobel Prize for his work in 1899-1900 on exactly the problem of cavity radiators (furnaces, integrating spheres, black body radiators). --Tim May