True Derivation of Wien's Law

1. Apr 26, 2010

Math Jeans

Just for clarification, I am referring to the Wien distribution law, and not Wien's Displacement Law.

I understand the fact that the law can easily be derived by treating is as a high-frequency limit of Planck's radiation formula, however, this is incredibly frustrating to me. Why? Wien's law was derived 4 years BEFORE Planck's radiation formula, and all of the derivations of Wien's law that I can find on the internet are based off of Planck's law.

I'm currently doing a research project on Blackbody radiation, and in order to keep a coherent timeline, I really need a derivation without the use of a formula which did not exist in 1896.

Any thoughts/sources?

2. Apr 14, 2015

thebuttonfreak

This is old but in case anyone cares....

The original paper is "On the division of energy in the emission-spectrum of a black body", it's written in english, or was translated and is quite clear and very readable, even for modern readers. He assumes that the form black body radiation formula is an exponential, and integrates out to give something proportional T^4. Believe it or not, with not much else he derives his result, the constants are left to experiment to find. This was published june 1898 and by 1899 it was shown to be incorrect at long wavelegnths. Planck's solution is 1900. Look up the original paper.

3. Apr 15, 2015

DaPi

In only partial answer to the question, this puts it into a historical context, with some indications of the assumptions involved:
http://webpages.uidaho.edu/~crepeau/ht2009-88060.pdf