.
The remarkable law of Nature is that we are continually getting the same numerical results. We may take another source of light—hydrogen, calcium, or any other atom. The energy will be a different number of ergs; the period will be a different number of seconds; but the product will be the same number of erg-seconds. The same applies to X-rays, to gamma rays and to other forms of radiation. It applies to light absorbed by an atom as well as to light emitted, the absorption being discontinuous also. Evidently
is a kind of atom—something which coheres as one unit in the processes of radiation; it is not an atom of matter but an atom or, as we usually call it, a quantum of the more elusive entity action. Whereas there are 92 different kinds of material atoms there is only one quantum of action—the same whatever the material it is associated with. I say the same without reservation. You might perhaps think that there must be some qualitative difference between the quantum of red light and the quantum of blue light, although both contain the same number of erg-seconds; but the apparent difference is only relative to a frame of space and time and does not concern the absolute lump of action. By approaching the light-source at high speed we change the red light to blue light in accordance with Doppler’s principle; the energy of the waves is also changed by being referred to a new frame of reference. A sodium flame and a hydrogen flame are throwing out at us the same lumps of action, only these lumps are rather differently orientated with respect to the Now lines which we have drawn across the four-dimensional world. If we change our motion so as to alter the direction of the Now lines, we can see the lumps of sodium origin under the same orientation in which we formerly saw the lumps of hydrogen origin and recognise that they are actually the same.
We noticed in [chapter IV] that the shuffling of energy can become complete, so that a definite state is reached known as thermodynamical equilibrium; and we remarked that this is only possible if indivisible units are being shuffled. If the cards can be torn into smaller and smaller pieces without limit there is no end to the process of shuffling. The indivisible units in the shuffling of energy are the quanta. By radiation absorption and scattering energy is shuffled among the different receptacles in matter and aether, but only a whole quantum passes at each step. It was in fact this definiteness of thermodynamical equilibrium which first put Prof. Max Planck on the track of the quantum; and the magnitude of
was first calculated by analysis of the observed composition of the radiation in the final state of randomness. Progress of the theory in its adolescent stage was largely due to Einstein so far as concerns the general principles and to Bohr as regards its connection with atomic structure.
The paradoxical nature of the quantum is that although it is indivisible it does not hang together. We examined first a case in which a quantity of energy was obviously cohering together, viz. an electron, but we did not find
; then we turned our attention to a case in which the energy was obviously dissolving away through space, viz. light-waves, and immediately