ABSTRACT
Modern physicists incorporate into their statistical analyses additional degrees of freedom, parameters that were unknown to the nineteenth-century scientists. The true black body intensity distribution is continuous, but the model of discrete radiators provides a good approximation for the observed wavelengths of light and stimulated a paradigm shift in the thinking of physicists about microphysics. Niels Bohr model was a source of consternation to the contemporary physics community. As with thermodynamics, quantum theory is extraordinarily useful and has been applied with tremendous ingenuity by solid-state physicists, engineers, and others who are able to harness its guidance for technological innovation. The disconcerting quantum jumps were explained away by re-envisioning the localized planetary electron as a distributed cloud surrounding the atomic nucleus. The technique of Fourier analysis was Werner Heisenberg’s path to the development of a quantum theory, which he ultimately expressed in the mathematical form of matrices.
