Re: What composes the mass of an electron?

rhertz <hertz778@gmail.com> wrote:

In 1908, Svante Arrhenius proposed Planck and Rutherford for the Nobel
Prize in Physics (Planck) and Chemistry (Rutherford) for:
 
Planck: Calculation of the charge of the electron from his radiation
law.
 
Rutherford: Calculation of the charge of the alpha particle from
experiments.
 
 
Because the works of Planck and Rutherford were still in debate by that
year, the proposal was dismissed.
 
Planck's work precedes Millikan and others, and was entirely
theoretical.
 
Yet, his calculations were close to actual values:
 
 
Charge 1e (Planck 1900) = 4.69E-10 esu OR g^1/2 cm^3/2 s^-1
 
Charge 1e (Millikan 1913) = 4.774E-10 esu OR g^1/2 cm^3/2 s^-1
 
Today: Charge 1e (StatC) = 4.80325451E-10 esu OR g^1/2 cm^3/2 s^-1
 
 
Jan, read this and don't be so ignorant. Many scientists were trying to
find the charge of electrons since 1897, but historians CANCELED THEM
(also due to political struggles, which are getting worse 120 years
after).
 
 
Arrhenius, the atomic hypothesis and the 1908 Nobel Prizes in Physics
and Chemistry
 
 https://www.jstor.org/stable/232940
 
 
Don't be so ignorant, charlatan Jan.

Sigh, so you succeeded in misunderstanding that too.
Planck didn't do any calculations with electrons,
or with the classical electon radius.

What Planck did do was to obtain a value for Avogadro's number
by obtaining values for h (Plancks constant)
and k (Boltzmann's constant) from the radiation law.

All this was highly speculative theory at the time,
with both the radiation law and statistical mechanics
being poorly understood and highly contested.
(let alone the statistical mechanics of the radiation field)
Einstein had not put that in order yet.

Moreover, there were many other ways of estimating Avogadros number,
which were gradually converging at the time.
There was little reason for singling out Planck.

However, Arrhenius had met Planck, they had become great friends,
and Arrhenius had decided that he wanted to get Planck a Nobel prize.
Arrhenius failed to convince his collegues of course.
Rutherford did get the 1908 chemistry prize (for identifying the alpha)
and Planck had to wait till 1919 for getting his,

Jan