History of Science as a Facilitator for the Study of Physics

This book serves to enhance scientific and technological literacy, by promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education with particular reference to contemporary physics. The study is presented in the form of a repertoire, and it gives the reader a glimpse of the conceptual structure and development of quantum theory along a rational line of thought, whose understanding might be the key to introducing young generations of students to physics.

The recurrent theme here is that the conceptual extension of the concept of natural radiation (symbolized by the constant h) allows an easy method of charting the conceptual development of quantum theory. The repertoire focuses on some momentous events of quantum theory, including the discovery of the constant h, which is one of the fundamental constants of nature and the key to understanding quantum mechanics; the discovery of the photon by Albert Einstein; and Niels Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom; the experiments which led to disclosing the structure of atomic nuclei in the 1930s; and the discovery of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, which constitute the basis of contemporary particle physics.