At the end of the 19-th century, physics was at its most confidence
situation. Classical phyics, as formulated in Newton’s law of mechanics
and Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, have proved very successful
in solving every problem.
→At that time there seemed to be no question for which physics could
not provide an answer !!!
But then it came as a great shock when some simple phenomena were
observed which could not be explained by classical physics
→a new theory, quantum theory, was developed at the beginning of the
20-th century...