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#Max Planck is often described as a reluctant revolutionary. His idea: matter emits energy in a certain quantum - you get a wave packet of a certain frequency. He didn't think of the emitted quantum as a photon,a corpuscle or particle. This was Einstein's idea. If this distinction is to subtle for you, well, remember that you are standing on the shoulders of giants, and while you may see more then them, you may miss some of the stones they stumbled upon once. And it was a great step, a ridiculous one to take, to think of light as particles: the wave-nature of light was well established, as Max Planck said, any other model would throw ''the theory of light back for decades, or even centuries''...

#Max Planck is often described as a reluctant revolutionary. His idea: matter emits energy in a certain quantum - you get a wave packet of a certain frequency. He didn't think of the emitted quantum as a photon,a corpuscle or particle. This was Einstein's idea. If this distinction is to subtle for you, well, remember that you are standing on the shoulders of giants, and while you may see more then them, you may miss some of the stones they stumbled upon once. And it was a great step, a ridiculous one to take, to think of light as particles: the wave-nature of light was well established, as Max Planck said, any other model would throw ''the theory of light back for decades, or even centuries''...

#Philip Lenard was a great experimentator. And he recieved his Nobel prize for this work. He examined a phenomenon which couldn't be explained by the current theories in great debts. That these experiments can be performed nowadays in any well-equipped high school, doesn't mean that it was easy to perform them over a century ago.  

#Philip Lenard was a great experimentator. And he received his Nobel prize for this work. He examined a phenomenon in great depths which couldn't be explained by the current theories . That these experiments can be performed nowadays in any well-equipped high school, doesn't mean that it was easy to perform them over a century ago.  

#Philip Lenard ''didn't understand'' what he was doing. Michelson and Morley ''didn't understand'' what they were doing. Arno Penzias und Robert Woodrow Wilson ''understand'' what they were doing. All of those had no - or the wrong - idea of the theories which lead to the observations by which they were puzzled. That's one point '''why''' there observations are cornerstones of the history of science.

#Philip Lenard ''didn't understand'' what he was doing. Michelson and Morley ''didn't understand'' what they were doing. Arno Penzias und Robert Woodrow Wilson didn't ''understand'' what they were doing. All of those had no - or the wrong - idea of the theories which lead to the observations by which they were puzzled. That's one point '''why''' there observations are cornerstones of the history of science.

#''Einstein is peculiar in that he was well known for being very jealous about crediting anyone but himself.'' So was Gauss. And Lenard was a rabid anti-semitic. All accounts agree - on the other hand - that Max Planck was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet - the Nazi propaganda called him a ''white Jew''. All of them made valuable contributions to science. And one of Einstein's contributions was to explain the photoelectric effect by introducing light-quanta - an explanation, Lenard hadn't thought of and Planck was surprised by.  

#''Einstein is peculiar in that he was well known for being very jealous about crediting anyone but himself.'' So was Gauss. And Lenard was a rabid anti-semite. All accounts agree - on the other hand - that Max Planck was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet - the Nazi propaganda called him a ''white Jew''. All of them made valuable contributions to science. And one of Einstein's contributions was to explain the photoelectric effect by introducing light-quanta - an explanation, Lenard hadn't thought of and Planck was surprised by.  

--[[User:BRichtigen|BRichtigen]] 07:43, 26 October 2008 (EDT)

--[[User:BRichtigen|BRichtigen]] 07:43, 26 October 2008 (EDT)