July '23

When in Berlin in 1894 the young professor Max Planck wanted to facilitate his work and divided the well-understood light rays into smaller pieces, he happened to resolve a long-lasting mystery of why black objects heat up faster. The disruption his discovery caused to the existing harmony was eternal, much like a club promoting colourful socks would be turned topsy-turvy if it were to issue an all-black pair.

In spite of the academia’s disbelief, all clues suddenly pointed to the fact that light and also colours were not a single wave but rather a stream of small, inseparable and intangible particles called photons. That is how quantum physics was born. The theory was so bizarre that even Planck knew it would take a while for it to catch on. He said that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”

Perhaps the most change-averse scientific minds simply lacked a good illustrative aid. For example, when you take a closer look at one of the pedal envelopments attached to this letter, you will see black waves broken down into small dots. Max Planck tried to make a similar statement, even though the dots he spoke of would have to be smaller by fifteen orders of magnitude.

After your new socks have finally given you that easy-to-grasp explanation of quantum physics you had always needed, do not throw them away. If light can exist both as a wave and a stream of particles, why could a piece of fabric not serve as both a visual aid and a sock?