Assumptions of Planck’s Radiation Law

Planck in 1900 suggested the correct explanation of the black body radiation curve. They gave the following assumption →

1. A chamber contains black body energy radiation and simple harmonic oscillators (atoms of Wall, i.e. Black lamp & Platinum coating inside wall, behave as oscillators or resonators) of molecular dimensions which can vibrate with all possible frequencies.


2. The frequency of energy radiation emitted by an oscillator is the same as the frequency of its vibration.


3. An oscillator cannot emit or absorb the energy in a continuous manner it can emit or absorb energy in a small unit (packet) called Quanta.

If an oscillator is vibrating with a frequency $ \nu $ it can only radiate in quanta of magnitude $h\nu $ i.e. “The oscillator can have only discrete energy value $E_{n}$ ” given by–

$E_{n}=nh\nu$

Where
$n$ – an integer
$h$– Planck ’s constant and the value is $6.626\times10^{-34} J-s$

The average energy of Planck’s oscillator of frequency $\nu$ -

$E_{\lambda}d\lambda = \frac{8\pi hc}{\lambda ^{5}} \frac{d\lambda }{(e^{\frac{hc}{\lambda kT}}-1)}$

$E_{\nu}d\nu= \frac{8\pi h\nu^{3}}{c^{3}}\frac{d\nu }{(e^{\frac{h\nu}{kt}}-1)}$

This assumption is most revolutionary in character. This implies that the exchange of energy between radiation and matter (Black lamp or platinum Coating ) cannot take place continuously but are limited to a discrete set of value $ 0, h\nu, 2h\nu, 3h\nu,------ nh \nu $.