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Double Slit Experiment
While investigating light the old paradigm began to break down. Planck began to see the quantifiable energy of a light particle, or photon, that Einstein predicted. Another scientist, Young, conducted an important experiment dubbed the double slit experiment. This showed the wave property of light. -
Paradigm Change
Around the beginning of the 20th century there was a change in the paradigm of physics. For centuries we believed the natural world operated under the ideas that Sir Isaac Newton gave the world. Everything we observed to this point did seem to work this way. Through exhaustive deductive research we could predict phenomena through inductive reasoning. This no longer held true when the physics world began investigating the properties of light -
Breakdown of Classical Mechanics
What Bohr realized is that for this to happen the electron would have to know where it will be before it goes there. So, we should be able to see that change. Unfortunately we could not see it in experimentation. The electron was disappearing and reappearing in two different energy states. Much like Young’s double slit experiment showed atomic particles were occupying two different areas in space at the same time. That was not possible in classical mechanics. https://youtu.be/DLyBG4mqZ3s -
Is the atom real
Bohr was beginning to wonder if the atom was real if we could not experiment with it. Heisenberg developed his uncertainty relation as Bohr called it, but Bohr thought that only explained what was observed and did not predict. Faye, J. Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Posted: May 3, 2002, revised: July 24, 2014. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/