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It was a wonderful world my father told me about.
You might wonder what he got out of it all. I went to MIT. I went to
Princeton. I went home and he said, ‘Now you’ve got a science education. I
have always wanted to know something that I have never understood; and so,
my son, I want you to explain it to me.’ I said yes.
He said, ‘I understand that they say that light is emitted from an atom
when it goes from one state to another, from an excited state to a state of
lower energy.’
I said ‘That’s right.’
‘And light is a kind of particle, a photon I think they call it.’
‘Yes.’
‘So if the photon comes out of the atom when it goes from the excited to
the lower state, the photon must have been in the atom in the excited state.’
I said, ‘Well, no.’
He said, ‘Well, how do you look at it so you can think of a particle photon
coming out without it having been in there in the excited state?’
I thought a few minutes, and I said, ‘I’m sorry; I don’t know. I can’t
explain it to you.’
He was very disappointed after all these years and years trying to teach
me something, that it came out with such poor results.
—R. P. Feynman, The Physics Teacher, vol 7, No 6, September 1969
All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to the
answer to the question, ‘What are light quanta?’ Of course today every rascal
thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.
—A. Einstein (1951)
Quoted in ‘Einstein’s research on the nature of light’
E. Wolf (1979), Optic News, vol 5, No 1, page 39.
I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can
make a mechanical model I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a
mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand; and that is why
I cannot get the electromagnetic theory.
—Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, 1884 Notes of Lectures on Molecular
Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light delivered at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, stenographic report by A. S. Hathaway (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University) Lecture XX, pp 270–1.
It was a wonderful world my father told me about.
You might wonder what he got out of it all. I went to MIT. I went to
Princeton. I went home and he said, ‘Now you’ve got a science education. I
have always wanted to know something that I have never understood; and so,
my son, I want you to explain it to me.’ I said yes.
He said, ‘I understand that they say that light is emitted from an atom
when it goes from one state to another, from an excited state to a state of
lower energy.’
I said ‘That’s right.’
‘And light is a kind of particle, a photon I think they call it.’
‘Yes.’
‘So if the photon comes out of the atom when it goes from the excited to
the lower state, the photon must have been in the atom in the excited state.’
I said, ‘Well, no.’
He said, ‘Well, how do you look at it so you can think of a particle photon
coming out without it having been in there in the excited state?’
I thought a few minutes, and I said, ‘I’m sorry; I don’t know. I can’t
explain it to you.’
He was very disappointed after all these years and years trying to teach
me something, that it came out with such poor results.
—R. P. Feynman, The Physics Teacher, vol 7, No 6, September 1969
All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to the
answer to the question, ‘What are light quanta?’ Of course today every rascal
thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.
—A. Einstein (1951)
Quoted in ‘Einstein’s research on the nature of light’
E. Wolf (1979), Optic News, vol 5, No 1, page 39.
I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can
make a mechanical model I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a
mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand; and that is why
I cannot get the electromagnetic theory.
—Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, 1884 Notes of Lectures on Molecular
Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light delivered at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, stenographic report by A. S. Hathaway (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University) Lecture XX, pp 270–1.