eCosmology

How did Einstein give birth to quantum mechanics?

I've read that Einstein is the father or grandfather of quantum mechanics, even though he was against it. How did that happen? What theory of Einstein's opened up the world of quantum mechanics? I know that Einstein was a firm believer of a clockwork universe. In his own words "God doesn't play dice with the universe." So how did Einstein's clockwork universe become uncertain? Mostly based on probability? The next person that gives me a nonsense answer like miketherex is getting reported. Please be serious.

Public Comments

1. Quantum mechanics is something that I have yet to get my head around. It just baffles me. But, I did find some links that could help you (I know you could probably get these yourself but I want to be at least somewhat helpful!) http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/The_Quantum_age_begins.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
2. "...What theory of Einstein's opened up the world of quantum mechanics?..." Planck had earlier shown that light could be understood as individual particles (...photons...) which he called 'quanta' of light. Einstein took that theory and extended it to explain how electrons are could be knocked lose from certain metals when the material was bombarded by 'quanta' of light. This work in turn influenced Schroedinger's Uncertainty Principle, one of the foundations of quantum physics. It was this quantum uncertainty that Einstein disliked.
3. Yeah, basically Einstein used Plank's quantum hypothesis to describe the photoelectric effect. In the photoelectric effect, light shines on a metal and ejects electrons. At that point in time, light was thought of as being composed of waves. It was reasoned that brighter light would cause electrons to be ejected with more energy because the light would have a higher amplitude. Instead it was observed that brighter light just resulted in more electrons with the same energy as before. It was also observed that if you change the frequency of the incoming light (its color), then you get electrons with more energy. This baffled the other physicists of Einstein's time. Einstein showed that this is exactly what you would expect if light were thought of as being composed of little tiny particles. Brighter light means more incoming light particles, so thus you get more electrons. He used Plank's work to show that the energy of these incoming light particles would depend upon their frequency. Thus a change in frequency would be expected to cause a change in ejected electron energy. Thus Einstein made a contribution to the quantum theory in its early years. The probability stuff didn't come in until later with the work of Heisenberg (known for his uncertainty principle), Dirac, Pauli, Schrodinger, and many others. I should also point out that Einstein wasn't the first guy to think of light as being made up of particles. In fact, Newton and others had supported this idea. The particle view of light just kind of fell out of favor in the 1800's with the discovery of diffraction and Maxwell's electromagnetic wave theory. I should also mention that the current quantum mechanical view is that light is neither a wave nor a particle...it can exhibit the behavior of either depending on the experiment you're running.