Otto Lummer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Otto Lummer
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Lummer in 1902
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| Born | 17 July 1860 |
| Died | 5 July 1925 (aged 64) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Doctoral advisor | Hermann von Helmholtz |
| Doctoral students | George Ernest Gibson Hedwig Kohn |
Otto Richard Lummer (born July 17, 1860 – died July 5, 1925) was a German physicist and researcher. A physicist is a scientist who studies physics, which is the study of how the universe works. Lummer was born in Gera, a city in what is now Germany. He made important discoveries about light and heat.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Otto Lummer was born in 1860. He grew up in Germany and later became a scientist. He was very interested in how light and heat behave. His work helped other scientists understand more about the world around us.
Working with Light and Heat
Lummer spent most of his career studying optics and thermal radiation.
- Optics is the science that looks at how light works. It studies how light travels, how it bends, and how we see things.
- Thermal radiation is the heat energy that objects give off. Think of a warm oven or a glowing light bulb; they both give off thermal radiation.
Creating New Inventions
Otto Lummer worked with another scientist named Leon Arons. Together, they helped create the Arons–Lummer mercury-vapor lamp. This was an early type of electric light bulb. It used mercury vapor to produce light.
He also worked with Ernst Gehrcke in 1903. They developed a special tool called the Lummer–Gehrcke interferometer. An interferometer is a device that uses light waves to measure things very precisely. It can help scientists study light in great detail.
Understanding Black-Body Radiation
One of Lummer's most important contributions was his work on black-body radiators. A black body is an ideal object that absorbs all light and heat that hits it. It also gives off light and heat when it's hot. Lummer's experiments helped scientists understand how much light and heat these objects give off at different temperatures.
His findings were very important for another famous physicist, Max Planck. Lummer's work, along with others, helped Planck develop his famous Planck's law. This law explained how energy is given off in tiny packets called "quanta." This idea was a huge step forward in quantum mechanics, which is a major part of modern physics.
Later Life
Otto Lummer passed away in 1925 in Breslau. This city is now called Wrocław and is in Poland. His work continues to be important in the fields of optics and quantum physics.
External links
- Otto Lummer para niños (in Spanish)
