Science Common Sense

1704 - What is Planck's explanation for black-body radiation?

Planck's explanation for black-body radiation is this:

You know how things glow when they're hot, like a fire or the sun? Well, a long time ago, a scientist named Max Planck tried to figure out why this happens. He said that when things get hot, their tiny particles (called atoms) start to vibrate really fast.

These vibrating atoms send out tiny packets of energy called quanta. Think of quanta like tiny balls that fly out of the hot object. The hotter the object, the more of these balls it shoots out.

The key part is that Planck said these quanta come in specific sizes, or amounts of energy. You can't just have half a quantum; it's either a whole one or nothing at all. This was a really new and important idea, because before that, scientists thought that energy could be any size or amount.

So, to sum it up, Planck said that hot objects send out tiny packets of energy in specific sizes, and this helps explain why things glow when they're hot.