ABSTRACT
One of the first inklings of a problem in physics at the end of the 19th century was the nature of the radiation emission spectrum from a black body. This could not be explained in terms of established and irrefutable methods of statistical mechanics. It was Planck’s idea to divide up the energy spectrum of a series of harmonic oscillators each with a different state of energy but whose energy steps depended upon the frequency of the oscillation that marked the beginning of quantum physics. As a result, Planck introduced a fundamental constant of nature, Planck’s constant.
