Planck's Constant

[Marcus Lagman 2A]

Hello,

This is a general question regarding Eistein's E=hv. So I was wondering where Planck's constant, h, came from. Like why is it that specific number and what was the history behind the number? A general overview would be fine! Thank you.

[Sarah Hernandez 1F]

Planck's constant is the proportionality constant discovered by Max Planck which he derived after trying to figure out the relation between the frequency of a photon to its energy because at the time the existing theories were found to be not entirely accurate. You can look up more online if you want specifics but hopefully this helps.

[Madilyn Schindler 3E]

In summary, Max Planck basically realized that energy was quantized instead of continuous when it came to photons and wanted to figure out the exact number that related the amount of energy that a photon carries with the frequency of the wave that it is part of. Scientists have used varying experiments to try to determine the exact value of Planck's constant. The number that he actually came up with has changed over time as a result of these experiments and could still change in the future. Hope that helps!

[Alex Benson]

Plank's Constant is used to relate the photons energy to its frequency. This was discovered through the distribution of radiation emitted by a blackbody. It was discovered in 1900 and has been used since!