He Lit the Quantum Flame — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-SCI-CN-PLA-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

He Lit the Quantum Flame Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Planck presented the quantum of action in December 1900 without quite believing in it. In January 1945 the Nazis executed his son Erwin for taking part in the 20 July plot. The print is his portrait among clocks, atoms and a flame.

A Author

Max Planck

B Subject

Quantum Physics

C Aesthetic

Photocopy · Collage

Exploration

Planck called his own discovery an act of desperation. He had spent years trying to derive the radiation curve of a hot body by classical means and it would not come out; in December 1900 he supposed energy was emitted in discrete packets because it was the only thing that fitted the data.

He did not believe it. He spent the following decade looking for a way to recover continuity and go back to the physics he knew, and failed because he was right.

It is the cleanest case I know of a finding its own author did not want. Twentieth-century physics begins with a conservative man making a provisional concession to fit a graph, and that is the honest portrait of how things change: not through boldness, but because nothing else is left.

His son Erwin was executed in 1945 for taking part in the plot against Hitler. Planck was eighty-seven and had two years left.

Details