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2 years ago in History of Physics By Suresh
Who is credited with the concept of the photon, and what are Einstein’s two postulates of Special Relativity?
I'm preparing comprehensive qualifying exam notes and want to ensure my foundational definitions are precise and historically accurate. I know Einstein is central to both, but was he truly the first to propose the light quantum? And while I use the consequences of Special Relativity daily, I want to recite the two clean, original postulates without the typical textbook embellishment.
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By Rani Answered 1 year ago
For the photon, while Planck quantized energy exchange, it was Einstein's 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect that courageously proposed light itself is quantized into discrete energy parcels ("Lichtquanten"). This is the conceptual birth of the photon, though the name came later from Lewis. For Special Relativity, also from 1905, the two postulates are elegantly simple: 1) The laws of physics are identical in all inertial frames. 2) The speed of light in vacuum is constant and independent of the motion of the source or observer. Everything else time dilation, length contraction follows logically from these.
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