The Quantum Puzzle ─ Critique of Quantum Theory and Electrodynamics

This book takes the reader on a historical tour through the key theories of quantum physics, highlighting the main lines of development up to 1925, and pointing out the conceptual difficulties that have arisen. Each theory is presented with clarity and completeness to allow the reader easy access to the derivations. Relevant diagrams are included to illustrate the arguments throughout.The Heisenberg–Bohr program, in which only a theory of observables is permitted, has obstructed researchers from searching for a workable model of the interaction of radiation and atoms. A more productive program would be to free the investigator to posit possible unobservable realities and, to this end, new lines of investigation are suggested for the reader to consider. Designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this refreshing approach presents the nature of light quantum, mass, charge, electric potential, and the structure of atomic hydrogen as conceptual problems that are still essentially unsolved.