Simultaneously
with the development of wave mechanics, Heisenberg evolved a different
mathematical analysis known as matrix mechanics. According to Heisenberg's
theory, which was developed in collaboration with the German physicists
Max Born and Ernst Pascual Jordan, the formula was not a differential equation
but a matrix: an array consisting of an infinite number of rows, each row
consisting of an infinite number of quantities. Matrix mechanics introduced
infinite matrices to represent the position and momentum of an electron
inside an atom. Also, different matrices exist, one for each observable
physical property associated with the motion of an electron, such as energy,
position, momentum, and angular momentum. These matrices, like Schrödinger's
differential equations, could be solved; in other words, they could be
manipulated to produce predictions as to the frequencies of the lines in
the hydrogen spectrum and other observable quantities. Like wave mechanics,
matrix mechanics was in agreement with the earlier quantum theory for processes
in which the earlier quantum theory agreed with experiment; it was also
useful in explaining phenomena that earlier quantum theory could not explain.
Copyright
© 2001
Time Travel
Research Association
17 October,
2000