The radiation emitted from a very hot object (known as black-body radiation) didn’t align with physicists’ understanding of light as a wave. Specifically, very hot objects emitted radiation in a specific spectrum of frequencies and intensities, which varied with the temperature of the object. Hotter objects had higher intensities at lower wavelengths (toward the blue\/UV end of the spectrum), and cooler objects emitted more intensity at higher wavelengths (toward the red\/infrared end of the spectrum). Physicists expected that at very short wavelengths the energy radiated would become very large, in contrast to observed spectra. This problem was known as the ultraviolet catastrophe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
German physicist Max Planck solved this puzzle by proposing that atoms could only absorb or emit radiation in specific, non-continuous amounts, known as quanta. Energy, therefore, is quantized – it only exists in specific discrete amounts. For his work, Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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