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The idea of quantum physics first started when the physicist Max Planck suggested a new model to explain the emission of radiation from hot objects. Physicists call an object that absorbs all the radiation falling on it a ‘black body.’
When a black body is heated there is a spectrum of emitted electromagnetic radiation, which depends on the temperature of the black body. The problem was that the physical laws known at the time did not correctly predict or explain what the spectrum was like. They predicted an infinite amount of radiation at high frequencies, and this became known as the ‘ultraviolet catastrophe.’
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