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The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was the prediction of late 19th century to early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium would emit an unbounded quantity of energy as wavelength decreased into the ultraviolet range.
Nov 24, 2022 · The ultraviolet (UV) catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, is the prediction of classical electromagnetism that the intensity of the radiation emitted by an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium goes to infinity as wavelength decreases (see figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) )\(^1\).
May 22, 2019 · The ultraviolet catastrophe is the error at short wavelengths in the Rayleigh–Jeans law (depicted as “classical theory” in the graph) for the energy emitted by an ideal black-body.
This video provides a detailed explanation of the ultraviolet catastrophe and Max Planck's solution to the problem following the presentation of Esiberg and ...
Dec 13, 2023 · The ultraviolet catastrophe was a perplexing issue in physics during the late 1800s. Scientists, using classical physics, predicted that the intensity of radiation emitted by a black body would skyrocket to infinity as the frequency of the radiation increased, particularly in the ultraviolet range.
The German physicist Max Planck (1858 – 1947) was able to solve the ultraviolet catastrophe through what, at least at first, he saw as a mathematical trick. This trick, which marked the birth of quantum physics, also led to Planck being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.
Although the Rayleigh-Jeans law works for higher wavelengths \(\lambda\), it diverges as \(\lambda\) become low in value; this divergence for high frequencies is called the ultraviolet catastrophe.
This divergence between the results of classical theory and experiments, which came to be called the ultraviolet catastrophe, shows how classical physics fails to explain the mechanism of blackbody radiation.
Worse yet, the form of \( u \) is unbounded as \( f \) grows large. When integrated over the entire spectrum, the Rayleigh-Jeans distribution would suggest that blackbodies radiate infinite energy, a problem that became known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe."
Figure 1 shows the wavelength distribution for sunlight. The most intense radiation is in the visible region, with the intensity dropping off rapidly for shorter wavelength ultraviolet (UV) light, and more slowly for longer wavelength infrared (IR) light.
