ABSTRACT
The radiation emitted by a black body can be analysed by means of a prism, in which case the spectrum produced is a continuous band. Thus taking a small amount of radiant energy, to maintain thermal-equilibrium, when for example very great kinetic activity, but low temperature, is involved in the gaseous medium exterior to the oscillators of the solid, the energy cannot be shared, as it were, with the whole number of molecules so that it is everywhere the same at every instant of time. The measurable temperature, whatever that may be, is the same throughout the enclosure. Consequently, the energy has to be 'bunched up', or emitted spasmodically, to maintain the equilibrium principle, and this leads to the discontinuity involved in the quantum theory. The quantum of energy has been found to occur in the formulisation of such phenomena as, Black-body radiation. Specific heats of solids. Photo-electric effect. Line-spectra of hydrogen and helium.
