Not so useful when playing snooker

At the end of the 19th century physicists were united in their cleverness. It seemed that that everything had been explained already and that their laws of motion and energy could predict the behaviour of any system they chose. In fact they might have so little to do now that they might be able to go down the barbers and get a decent haircut. Snooker of course was now a doddle.

However, this trip down to the barbers was cut short when technology evolved to allow the study and measurement of objects and systems that were either very very small, very very hot, very very cold or going very very quickly.

It seemed that the classical mechanics of Newton and Gallileo failed when you tried to apply it to very small particles such as atoms and molecules for example. The solutions to some of these problems with classical physics eventually evolved into what is now the terribly complicated quantum mechanics.

This article will show some of the failures of classical physics and show how this led onto the quantum theory. If one wants to study this further then one is ill advised to do so unless one possesses a high talent for very difficult maths and is very good at drawing squiggly greek letters.