Sunday, October 7, 2012

Bohr Google Doodle

I'm excited whenever chemistry crops up in mainstream culture. As midnight came around on October 7, 2012, this Google Doodle suddenly appeared:

Aww, heck yeah! That's for Niels Bohr's 127th birthday, and nicely illustrates a bit of quantum theory: the energy gap between atomic electron levels is related to the frequency (v) of an observed photon by Planck's constant (h).

In case you needed any more justification for Niels Bohr's place in the physics pantheon, recall that his (self-designed) coat-of-arms showed a yin-yang symbol in black and red, symbolizing the strange pairings and duality often encountered in quantum physics.

1 comment: