Explainer · YouTube
Quantization of Energy Part 1: Blackbody Radiation and the Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Professor Dave Explains
A crisp seven-minute overview of this whole session: why hot objects glow, how the blackbody curve changes shape as the temperature rises, how the classical prediction runs off to infinity at short wavelengths, and how Planck's energy packets bring it back down. Short explainers compress the history, so let Parts 5 and 8 of the lesson tell you what Planck was actually trying to do. Some sources write frequency with the Greek letter nu, ν, instead of f; E = hν and E = hf are the same equation.