Classical behavior of macroscopic bodies from quantum principles: Early discussions
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Classical behavior of macroscopic bodies from quantum principles: Early discussions
zbMATH Open document ID: 0979.01016
author: Bruno Carazza
author: Helge Kragh
published in: Archive for History of Exact Sciences
publication date: 2001-02-22T00:00:00Z
review text: The question before the authors is: how did the founders of quantum mechanics propose to link their microscopic world of wave-particles to the macroscopically observed world governed locally by the Newton-Euler equations? Initially the founders did not propose to answer this question, but Schrödinger's first attempts (1926) to describe electrons caused Heisenberg, Ehrenfest, Madelung, and others to attempt to answer this micro-macro question, with some initial success. There are about 65 references in the 54 footnotes. The writing makes the reading flow, and the topic easy to understand. One should note that the authors' use of ``the real part of the wave function'' is not the usual meaning of the real part of a function of a complex variable, but refers to its modulus. The identity of C. G. Darwin is equivocal or ambiguous: for non-biologists, there is George Howard Darwin (son of Charles), and Charles Galton Darwin (``grandson of the real Darwin'').
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 81-03
zbMATH DE Number: 1568682
zbMATH Keywords: macroscopic description
zbMATH Keywords: quantum principles
zbMATH Keywords: Niels Bohr
zbMATH Keywords: Erwin Schrödinger
zbMATH Keywords: Paul Ehrenfest
zbMATH Keywords: superselection rules
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: s004070000018
OpenAlex ID: W2026777680
DOI: 10.1007/S004070000018
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1568682