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Physicists treat Helgoland as the birthplace of quantum theory.
About Helgoland
- Location: Helgoland is a speck of red-sandstone cliffs lies in the German Bay (Deutsche Bucht) of the North Sea.
- It is barely a square kilometre in area, it was once a naval fortress.
- Physicists today treat Helgoland as the birthplace of quantum theory.
Relevance of Helgoland
- In June 1925, Werner Heisenberg, 23 and tormented by hay fever in Göttingen, fled to Helgoland.Â
- He dropped the idea of electrons ‘orbiting’ an atom’s nucleus in favour of only those facts that fit experimental data: the frequencies and strengths of the light atoms absorb or emit.
- To keep track of those numbers, he arranged them in grids called matrices.
- When he multiplied the grids, the order mattered: position times momentum was not equal to momentum times position.
- This detail produced equations that matched the spectrum of hydrogen atoms perfectly. Heisenberg had thus sketched the first complete version of quantum mechanics, later called matrix mechanics.
Source: TH
Helgoland FAQs
Q1: Where is Heligoland island?
Ans: Northwestern Germany
Q2: What is quantum theory in simple terms?
Ans: It is the branch of physics theory that seeks to explain phenomena occurring at an atomic, and even smaller, scale.
