stern tv live experiment

February 8, 2022

100 Years Ago, a Quantum Experiment Explained Why We Don’t Fall through Our Chairs

The basic concept of quantum spin provides an understanding of a vast range of physical phenomena

By Davide Castelvecchi

Otto Stern.

Alamy Stock Photo

The moment I meet Horst Schmidt-Böcking outside the Bockenheimer Warte subway stop just north of the downtown area of Frankfurt, Germany, I know I have come to the right place. After my “Hi, thank you for meeting me,” his very first words are “I love Otto Stern.”

My trip on this prepandemic morning in November 2018 is to visit the place that, precisely a century before February 8, 2022, saw one of the most pivotal events for the nascent quantum physics. Without quite realizing what they were seeing, Stern and his fellow physicist and collaborator Walther Gerlach discovered quantum spin: an eternal rotational motion that is intrinsic to elementary particles and that, when measured, only comes in two possible versions—“up” or “down,” say, or “left” or “right”—with no other options in between.

Before the Roaring Twenties were over, physicists would reveal spin to be the key to understanding an endless range of everyday phenomena, from the structure of the periodic table to the fact that matter is stable—in other words, the fact that we don’t fall through our chair.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

But the reason why I have a personal obsession with the Stern-Gerlach experiment—and why I am here in Frankfurt—is that it provided nothing less than a portal for accessing a hidden layer of reality. As physicist Wolfgang Pauli would explain in 1927, spin is quite unlike other physical concepts such as velocities or electric fields. Like those quantities, the spin of an electron is often portrayed as an arrow, but it is an arrow that does not exist in our three dimensions of space. Instead it is found in a 4-D mathematical entity called a Hilbert space.

Schmidt-Böcking—a semi-retired experimentalist at Goethe University Frankfurt and arguably the world’s foremost expert on Stern’s life and work—is the best guide I could have hoped for. We walk around the block from the station, past the Senckenberg Natural History Museum Frankfurt, to the  Physikalischer Verein , the local physicists’ society, which predates Goethe University Frankfurt’s 1914 founding. In this building, in the wee hours of February 8, 1922, Stern and Gerlach shot a beam of silver atoms through a magnetic field and saw that the beam neatly split into two.

Apparatus used for the Stern-Gerlach experiment in 1922, equipped with modifications made a few years later. The schematic shows a silver beam emerging from an oven (O) and passing through a pinhole (S1) and a rectangular slit (S2). It then enters a magnetic field, whose direction is indicated by the arrow between the two pole pieces (P), and finally reaches a detector plate (A). Credit: “Otto Stern’s Molecular Beam Method and Its Impact on Quantum Physics,” by Bretislav Friedrich and Horst Schmidt-Böcking, in Molecular Beams in Physics and Chemistry . Edited by Bretislav Friedrich and Horst Schmidt-Böcking. Springer, 2021 (CC BY 4.0)

Once we are upstairs in the actual room of the experiment, Schmidt-Böcking explains that the whole experimental setup would have fit on a small desk. A vacuum system , made of custom blown-glass parts and sealed with Ramsay grease, enclosed the contraption. I find it hard to picture that in my mind, though, because the room, now windowless, is taken up by some of the nearby museum’s collections—specifically, cabinets with tiny specimens of bryozoans, invertebrates that form coral-like colonies.

Stern and Gerlach expected the silver atoms in their beam to act like tiny bar magnets and therefore to react to a magnetic field. As the beam shot horizontally, it squeezed through a narrow gap, with one pole of an electromagnet bracketed above and the other below. It exited the magnet and then hit a screen. When the magnetic field was turned off, the beam would just go straight and deposit a faint dot of silver on the screen, directly in line with the exit path of the beam from the magnet. But when the magnet was switched on, each passing atom experienced a vertical force that depended on the angle of its north-south axis. The force would be strongest upward if north pointed straight up, and it would be strongest downward if north pointed down. But the force could also take any value in between, including zero if the atom’s north-south axis was horizontal.

In these circumstances, a magnetic atom that came in at a random angle should have its trajectory deflected by a corresponding random amount, varying along a continuum. As a result, the silver arriving at the screen should have painted a vertical line. At least, that was Stern and Gerlach’s “classical” expectation. But that’s not what happened.

Unlike classical magnets, the atoms were all deflected by the same amount, either upward or downward, thus splitting the beam into two discrete beams rather than spreading it across a vertical line. “When they did the experiment, they must have been shocked,” says Michael Peskin, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University. Like many physicists, Peskin practiced doing the Stern-Gerlach experiment with modern equipment in an undergraduate lab class. “It’s really the most amazing thing,” he recalls. “You turn on the magnet, and you see these two spots appearing.”

Later that day in 2018, I get to see some of the original paraphernalia with my own eyes. Schmidt-Böcking drives me north in Frankfurt to one of the university’s campuses, where he keeps the artifacts inside well-padded boxes in his office. The most impressive piece is a high-vacuum pump— a type invented only a few years before the experiment —that removed stray air molecules using a supersonic jet of heated mercury.

It all looks tremendously fragile, and it is: According to witnesses, when the pieces were used, some glass part or other broke virtually every day. Restarting the experiment then required making repairs and pumping the air out again, which took several days. Unlike in modern experiments, the displacement of the beams was tiny—about 0.2 millimeter—and had to be spotted with a microscope.

At the time, Stern was shocked at the outcome. He had conceived the experiment in 1919 as a challenge to what was then the leading hypothesis for the structure of the atom. Formulated by physicist Niels Bohr and others starting in 1913, it pictured electrons like little planets orbiting the atomic nucleus. Only certain orbits were allowed, and jumping between them seemed to provide an accurate explanation for the quanta of light seen in spectroscopic emissions, at least for the simple case of hydrogen. Stern disliked quanta, and together with his friend Max von Laue, he had pledged that “if this nonsense of Bohr should in the end prove to be right, we will quit physics.”

To test Bohr’s theory, Stern had set about exploring one of its most bizarre predictions, which Bohr himself did not quite believe: that in a magnetic field, atomic orbits can only lie at particular angles. To pursue this experiment, Stern realized that he could look for a magnetic effect of the electron’s orbit. He reasoned that the outermost electron of a silver atom, which according to Bohr is orbiting the nucleus in a circle, is an electric charge in motion, and it should therefore produce magnetism.

In Stern and Gerlach’s experiment, the physicists detected the splitting of the beam, which they saw as confirmation of Bohr’s odd prediction: The atoms got deflected—implying that they were magnetic themselves—and they did so not over a continuum, as in the classical model, but into two separate beams.

It was only after modern quantum mechanics was founded, beginning in 1925, that physicists realized that the silver atom’s magnetism is produced not by the orbit of its outermost electron but by that electron’s intrinsic spin , which makes it act like a tiny bar magnet.Soon after he heard about of Stern and Gerlach’s results, Albert Einstein wrote to the Nobel Foundation to nominate them for a Nobel Prize. But the letter, which Schmidt-Böcking discovered in 2011, was apparently ignored because it nominated other researchers as well, against the foundation’s rules. Stern did not quit the field. Eventually he was one of the most Nobel-nominated physicists in history, and he did get his prize in 1943, while World War II was raging.

Stern’s prize did not honor his work with Gerlach, however. Instead it was awarded for another tour de force experiment in which Stern and a collaborator measured the magnetism of the proton in 1933—shortly before the Nazi regime drove Stern out of Germany because of his Jewish background. That result was the earliest indication that the proton is not an elementary particle: we now know that it is made of three building blocks called quarks. Gerlach never won a Nobel Prize, perhaps because of his participation in the Nazi regime’s attempt to build an atomic bomb.

Today the concept of quantum spin as a 4-D entity is the foundation for all quantum computers. The quantum version of a computer bit, called the qubit, has the same mathematical form as the spin of an electron—whether or not it is in fact encoded in any spinning object. It often is not.

Even so, to this day, physicists continue to argue about how to interpret the experiment. According to now textbook quantum theory, initially, the silver atom’s outer electron does not know which way it is spinning. Instead it starts out in a “quantum superposition” of both states—as if its spin were up and down at the same time. The electron does not decide which way it is spinning—and therefore which of the two beams its atom travels in—even after it has skimmed through the magnet. When it has left the magnet and is hurtling toward the screen, the atom splits into two different, coexisting personas, as if it were in two places at the same time: one moves in an upward trajectory, and the other heads downward. The electron only picks one state when its atom arrives at the screen: the atom’s position can only be measured when it hits the screen toward the top or bottom—in one of the two spots but not both. Others take what they call a more “realist” approach: the electron knew all along where it was going, and the act of measurement is simply a sorting of the two states that happens at the magnet.

A recent prominent experiment seems to lend added credence to the former interpretation . It suggests that the two personas do coexist when the two spin states are separated. Physicist Ron Folman of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and his colleagues re-created the Stern-Gerlach experiment using not individual atoms but a cloud of rubidium atoms. This was cooled to close to absolute zero, which made it act like a single quantum object with its own spin.

The researchers suspended the cloud in a vacuum with a device that can trap atoms and move them around using electric and magnetic fields. Initially, the cloud was in a superposition of spin up and spin down. The team then released it and let it fall by gravity. During its descent, they first applied a magnetic field to separate the atoms into two separate trajectories, according to their spin, just as in the Stern-Gerlach experiment. But unlike in the original experiment, Folman’s team then reversed the process and made the two clouds recombine into one. Their measurements showed that the cloud returned into its initial state. The experiment suggests that the separation was reversible and that quantum superposition persisted after being subject to a magnetic field that separated the two spin orientations.

The experiment goes to the heart of what constitutes a measurement in quantum mechanics. Were the spins in the Stern-Gerlach experiment “measured” by the initial sorting done by the magnet? Or did the measurement occur when the atoms hit the screen—or perhaps when the physicists looked at it? Folman’s work suggests that wherever a measurement happened, the separation was not at the first stage.

The results are unlikely to quell the philosophical diatribes around the meaning of quantum measurement, says David Kaiser, a physicist and historian of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the impact of the Stern-Gerlach experiment remains immense. It led physicists to realize “that there was some internal characteristic of a quantum particle that really doesn’t map on to analogies to things like planets and stars,” Kaiser says.

Watch This Next

Ep. 374: Stern-Gerlach Experiment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In the world of quantum mechanics, particles behave in discreet ways. One breakthrough experiment was the Stern-Gerlach Experiment, performed in 1922. They passed silver atoms through a magnetic field and watched how the spin of the atoms caused the particles to deflect in a very specific way.

Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript

This episode is sponsored by:  Swinburne Astronomy Online, 8th Light

Stern-Gerlach Experiment Simulation Particle Spin and the Stern-Gerlach Experiment Electron Spin Appendix 5: Right Experiment, Wrong Theory: The Stern-Gerlach Experiment The Stern-Gerlach Experiment, Electron Spin, and Correlation Experiments Philosophy of Quantum Physics Stern-Gerlach Experiment video Stern-Gerlach archive

Transcription services provided by: GMR Transcription

Introduction: This episode of Astronomy Cast is brought to you by Swinburne Astronomy Online, the world’s longest-running online astronomy degree program. Visit Astronomy.swin.edu.au for more information. Fraser Cane: Astronomy Cast, Episode 374 of the Stern-Gerlach Experiment. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos. We help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know. My name is Fraser Cain. I’m the publisher of Universe Today, and with me is Dr. Pamela Gay, a professor at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and that [inaudible] [00:00:39] quest. Hey, Pamela, how are you doing? Pamela Gay: I’m doing well. How are you doing Fraser? Fraser Cane: Good, although saying professor of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is actually tough. I struggle with it every single week. I have struggled with it for almost 400 times now, but we made it through. Pamela Gay: It line wraps. Fraser Cane: It’s very long; a very long title. Okay, so we can talk about the Hangoutathon, but I think by the time people listen to this it will have already happened. Pamela Gay: It will, but it won’t be too late to donate. The weekend before this goes live on the internet; we are recording 36 straight hours of video on Google Hangouts, and trying to raise money to keep Cosmo Quest going. Without your help, we’re kinda done for. And I don’t mean to sound black, but that is the actual literal truth. I’m in the process of writing a giant NASA proposal, but if we get it, we won’t get it until October, and we need to keep things going until October, and we can only do that with your help. So if you miss the Hangoutathone, and you want to see me keep doing awesome citizen science projects that allow you to contribute to publishable NASA research, go donate. CosmoQuest.org/hangoutathon, all one word. Every little bit helps. Ten dollars is more than an hour of a student’s time, and we need those students back. Fraser Cane: That would be. Just watch Pamela go from a sane person to a crazy person over the course of 36 hours. Thirty-six hours. Pamela Gay: You keep saying that, but it hasn’t happened yet. Fraser Cane: Third time’s the charm. Pamela Gay: I did confuse prosecco and prosciutto last year, but that was a tongue twister. Fraser Cane: Okay. Not an actual descent into madness? Pamela Gay: No. Introduction: This episode of Astronomy Cast is brought to you by 8th Light, Inc. 8th Light is an agile software development company. They craft beautiful applications that are durable and reliable. 8th Light provides discipline software leadership on demand, and shares its expertise to make your project better. For more information visit them online at www.8thlight.com. Just remember that’s www., the digit 8th light.com. Drop them a note. 8th Light; software is their craft. Fraser Cane: So in the world of quantum mechanics particles behave in discrete ways. One breakthrough experiment with the Stern-Gerlach Experiment performed in 1922, they passed silver atoms through a magnetic field and watched how the spin of the atoms caused the particles to deflect in a very specific way. So quantum mechanics – it’s been famously said if you think you understand quantum mechanics you don’t understand quantum mechanics. Before this experiment can you again set the scene? I guess where were scientists at their understanding of quantum mechanics? Pamela Gay: We’d gotten to the point of we understood that energy was quantized when it came to how electrons existed inside of atoms. So there was this notion that an electron had an allowed orbital energy that you could have up to two electrons per energy state. This is the poly exclusion principal. We’d started to get to the idea that there was an extraordinarily dense nucleus. Still didn’t know what was holding it together. We had gotten to the understanding of just how empty the rest of the atom was, but we were still confused with things like magnetism. There was the understanding that a charged particle in motion interacts with magnetic fields, generates magnetic fields. And an electron in an atom is kind of a charged particle. And so there was the question of are these magnetic states just like the energy states also quantized? We didn’t know, and that was what led to this experiment. Fraser Cane: So describe the setup then. How did they perform this experiment? Pamela Gay: Well, it was 1922 and the place was Frankfurt, Germany. We had two scientists. There was Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach. And what I loved is where they were located at the University of Frankfurt you didn’t just have a physics department. No that was far too mundane. They had an institute for theoretical physics which is where Stern was located, and they also had an institute for experimental physics, which was where Gerlach was located. And I find deep pleasure in the fact that they sort of isolated these two communities from one another. But Stern reached across the institutional divide and asked Gerlach can you devise an apparatus that we can subject charged particles to – in this case silver – and can you do this with a sufficient magnetic field that we will be able to tell are the magnetic states a continuum or discrete? Fraser Cane: It’s sort of back to that same question that we talked about a few episodes ago: Is it digital or is it analogue? Pamela Gay: Exactly. Fraser Cane: So you’re saying can there be a discrete state? So what does that mean then? If there is a discrete state for the particle, what are the implications as opposed to it being just a continuum? Pamela Gay: Well, in this case if there were discrete states, when they sent a stream of silver ions through the – in this case an inhomogeneous magnetic field – the silver atoms would split; some going one direction, some going to the other direction depending on their magnetic state. And so what you’d have is literally a splitting up based on magnetic field, one atom to the left, one atom to the right. But if instead you had a continuum of states, you’d have a smearing of the atoms instead where they went variable amounts to the left, variable amounts to the right, and some of them just didn’t really go anywhere. So these were the expected outcomes of the experiment. Fraser Cane: So I can sort of imagine that it’s like if it’s some – either you take the charge on these electrons – if it’s some multiplication of the basic charge then they’re gonna lock in, and they’re gonna get that spin out. Otherwise, they’re gonna go the other way as you tune the magnetic field. But if it’s just a – [Crosstalk] Pamela Gay: But [inaudible] [00:08:07] new case, the charge is the same. It’s the magnetic state that they were thinking might vary. Fraser Cane: But then, as you said, if it’s continuum, you just get this spray depending on each individual electron. So they ran an experiment. They had the expected outcomes, and what did they find? Pamela Gay: Actually confusion because as they were preparing to do this experiment, it was realized oh, – insert expletives in German – the angular momentum of electrons just might be zero. So if this was the case, instead of expecting a dichotomy of to the left to the right, what they actually expected was to the left, nothing to the right, so split of three different things. So there was this sudden we’ve been working on designing it, working on designing it, oh, let’s change what our expectations are now that we understand more about the angular momentum, the orbital angular momentum of the electron. But then the results they got was actually this splitting that didn’t match that expectation at all. Fraser Cane: How did it split? What was the result? Tell me Pamela. Pamela Gay: Well, the result was the original some to the left, some to the right. Fraser Cane: None to the middle? Pamela Gay: Yeah, which was kind of a head-scratcher. Fraser Cane: So then once they had sort of seen that then they knew that it was magnetically quantized, but – Pamela Gay: No, they initially knew it was confused. So what they had was this problem where they’d initially assumed that the magnetic moment they were dealing with would come from the orbiting electron in the silver atom. And the reason they were using the silver atom is because you have all of these stacked energy levels, and in the final energy level you’re left with one unmatched electron. And that one unmatched electron was going to be providing the magnetic moment, the orbital magnetic moment for the atom. But then they realized you can actually do a lot of cancellation, and that orbital angular momentum goes to zero. But what they hadn’t thought about is well, what if the electron itself has something that we can’t really describe except to liken it to spin. So if you think about it, the earth has orbital angular momentum related to our passage around the sun each year. That’s one set of angular momentum, and it’s that kind of orbital angular momentum they were expecting to create the magnetic moment, the magnetic field that they were trying to find. Fraser Cane: They were imagining the silver atom’s a little solar system? Pamela Gay: Exactly. And that’s a bad way to look at it, but it’s still the best our human brain can really do. But the other place that we have angular momentum is our earth is kind of rotating about its pole. Our day-night cycle is another spin that creates angular momentum. And when they looked at the results, they realized wait, what if in a classical imagining of what’s happening, we consider this as rotation about a pole of the electron where you have north up and north down creating two different kinds of, in this case, spin magnetic moments that are creating this to-the-left-and-to-the-right splitting of the silver as it goes through the inhomogeneous magnetic field. Fraser Cane: Whoa. So I guess the question then is did this give them a better understanding of what – to move away from that solar system idea of the atom into this more – because our modern idea of the electron – called the electron cloud that it’s not these electrons just spinning around like little planets going around the sun? That it is a region of probabilistic sense. So does this give them some of that understanding? Pamela Gay: It didn’t quite get them there yet. But what it did start to get at was the notion that the electron was a lot more complex than originally assumed. We now have a particle that we know has charge that we know is a fundamental particle that you can’t really break apart any further, but it somehow has its charge if you look at it from a classical approximation distributed on the surface of this point, and that’s kind of confusing. It also started to help add further understanding to another phenomena. It was realized that hydrogen has this weird line that appears at what we now look at as 20-centimeter radiation in the radio. This is the hydrogen fine structure forbidden line transition where there’s actually energy tied up in whether or not what we now know – or at least now refer to – as the spin of the electron and the spin of the proton. If they’re aligned that’s one energy state. And if they’re out of alignment that’s another energy state. And we can now see this weird line, and understand it using this magnetic spin. Fraser Cane: You, as an astronomer, you are looking for places, regions of that kind of hydrogen right? Pamela Gay: Exactly. And we find it’s a very infrequent – this hyper-fine structure transition – is a very infrequent transition. But when we look at massive clouds of hydrogen gas that don’t have that many collisions going on it’s possible for a hydrogen atom to just hang out long enough that it has a chance for this flip – sorry, it’s the 21-centimeter line – this flip at 21 centimeters, and we see it. And understanding this hyper-fine structure wouldn’t be possible without the Stern-Gerlach affect. Fraser Cane: But when you see that – like in spectroscopy – when you see the presence of the hydrogen at that specific wavelength in some big vast cloud of hydrogen what does that tell you as an astronomer? What process is going on there? Pamela Gay: What it tells us first of all it’s a really boring cloud of gas where very few collisions are taking place. If collisions were taking place other forms of energy transitions would take priority, and this very rare transition would never really statistically have a chance of happening. So first of all, it tells us the gas is boring and not colliding a lot and just hanging out. The other thing it tells us is that you actually can change energy states just by changing how the magnetic fields are aligned. This kind of makes sense. If you’ve ever played with bar magnets if you try and push the north end of two magnetics together that takes energy. Whereas, if you try and have them anti-aligned with the north to the south and the south to the north of the two bar magnets that will readily snap into place. So it’s that difference in the required energy. The difference in the energy with the two particles, depending on how they’re aligned that causes a photon to be released with this very particular 21-centimeter radiation. Fraser Cane: I mean it’s not star-forming regions? Pamela Gay: No. Nothing that exciting? Fraser Cane: It’s cold – Pamela Gay: It’s cold. Fraser Cane: But isn’t this like cold hydrogen gas left over from the Big Bang? Pamela Gay: Right. Fraser Cane: It hasn’t gone [inaudible] [00:16:50]. Pamela Gay: It can be reprocessed. It literally simply means this is cold gas that isn’t undergoing a lot of collisions. Fraser Cane: Right and is not in the process of forming new stars or whatever, but could be clouds for future abuse? Pamela Gay: Exactly. Fraser Cane: So let’s go back to the experiment. So they performed their experiment. They got their results, and how was that accepted by the scientific community, and what were the implications? Pamela Gay: Well, initially it led to a whole lot of head scratching because as I said there were these two theories on what should come out. One was initially it was split two ways and then it became split three ways, but then they actually saw it split two ways, and so the motivation for this theory was – well, it was a man named Summerfield, who came up with the initial theory that led to this experiment: the theory that it would get split the three different directions. But like I said, this was one of those moments of experiments not do what it was supposed to do. And even with the original split: a lot to the left, split a lot to the right, and nothing in the center that splitting was based on the orbital angular momentum which was a very different value from the spin angular momentum. So what they were seeing was still less of an effect than what was expected. Fraser Cane: It’s just a strange thing to think about when you think about actual atoms and each individual atoms having angular momentum. Right? Pamela Gay: Yes. Fraser Cane: And the electrons themselves as part of the atom, and that containing some of the angular momentum. It just seems really strange that you could break down the universe into these little, little pieces, and then you realize that the angular momentum of entire structures is made up. You would just add them all up, right? Pamela Gay: What gets me about this experiment as well is they did this in 1922. And this was not an entirely safe experiment to be doing. Silver atoms aren’t something that are just regularly hanging around all by their lonesome. They had to superheat the silver to get it in a pretty much gaseous form going through their inhomogeneous magnetic field. And the reason they were using silver was, like I said, because it has this final electron by its lonesome and an outer most orbital. They also chose it because it was readily detectable on their photographic plate. Let’s face it, silver’s kind of easy to spot when you fling it onto a photographic film. Fraser Cane: Should we be breathing superheated silver gas? Pamela Gay: No, not really, no. It’s just not the healthiest thing for you. So here they were in 1922. We didn’t have amazing electromagnets like we have today. We were just starting to figure things out like that. We didn’t have the machine shops we have today. We didn’t have the vacuum hoods. All of these that would have made this a relatively straightforward, relatively safe experiment. Instead, we have a theoretician saying I need this level of magnetic field to detect this effect. We have an experimentalist saying okay, I’ve got it, and then working together with silver gas. Fraser Cane: One of the things sort of talking quite a bit about with this experiment, it’s just this concept of spin. And I think this comes up quite a lot through quantum mechanics and through physics this idea that things on a particle like a proton, in an atom, are spinning. So when we talk about spin in terms of physics what are we talking about? Pamela Gay: This is where we get back to your original statement of if you think you know quantum mechanics, you probably don’t. Spin is a word that we use because it allows us to think about what’s going on from a classic perspective. You can imagine the electron as this sphere with the charge on the outermost parts of this sphere. And as it rotates, just like the earth’s rotation generates a magnetic field, the electrons’ spin would generate a magnetic field. The thing is that’s not actually what’s going on, and we’re not really sure what’s going because it’s not like we can go in and observe the very essence of an electron. There are people that argue that this is one aspect of string theory where when you see one spin it’s because you’re looking at one end of a string that is mostly rolled up into other dimensions, and when you see the opposite spin it’s because you’re seeing the other end of a string that’s rolled up into other dimensions. But this whole notion that it’s an electron with charge on its outside that’s just what we tell ourselves to make our brains not quite hurt as badly. Fraser Cane: And when we say that something is spin up or spin down what are we talking about? Pamela Gay: It’s literally does it go to the left as it’s going through a magnetic field, or does it go to the right as it’s going to a magnetic field? That’s our way of you might say one’s north, the other’s south, but that implies monopoles, so we can’t use those words. But it’s literally a way of expressing how it interacts with the magnetic field. You might think of it as North Pole is aligned upwards versus South Pole being aligned upwards. Fraser Cane: It’s like a bar magnet, right? Like it’s a binary situation. You have a bar magnetic that’s got a north-south, you bring the north pole to it, it’s gonna flip it around and clamp onto the south end, but it’s not – I guess as it’s moving through that magnetic field, the magnetic field is then getting them to align into the right alignment to whether they’re gonna veer up, or they’re gonna veer down through that magnetic field. Pamela Gay: And where it starts to get wrong as far as your stomach is concerned – because your stomach will try to do physics and fail mightily – is the spin is actually looked at in terms of different magnetic moments where you might have its spin is plus one-half or minus one-half. Or its angular momentum we’ll look at as being minus 1, 0 plus 1. And these are numbers that we use to represent what’s going on. But it’s important to understand that a lot of the rules of quantum mechanics are tools that we use to describe what we experimentally determined, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually describing the physical reality of what we’re seeing. It’s just a set of instruments, a set of math that allows us to get at predicting what will happen next. But that’s all it’s doing is very successfully predicting what has happened and explaining what we’ve seen. Fraser Cane: And we did a great show – go back in the archive – we talked about entanglement, and spin is one of these characteristics that physicists use to demonstrate entanglement. And so you can sort of take this experiment to the next level. You can really contort it and start to get at these entangled properties of these atoms as these electrons are sort of passing through this apparatus. Pamela Gay: And as you try and put this together – they got lucky with their particular atom of choice. It had an orbital angular momentum of 0, and so we were dealing with the electrons’ intrinsic angular momentum which is plus or minus one-half, but not all systems are equally elegant. Other systems you end up with additional magnetic moments that come from the orbital angular momentum being some different integer than 0, and so you have to add up all of these different bits to get at the total angular momentum, which reflects in the total magnetic moment of these particles and these atoms. Fraser Cane: Had a lot of work been done – because it feels like this was sort of one of the parts of why it’s such a groundbreaking experiment was that from the moment they started to take atoms and run them through these magnetic fields, they really started to tease out a lot of the fundamental measurements, characteristics of the atoms. And that variations, flavors of this experiment are still being run today just in more complicated higher energies. But still, this is the way – apart from smashing them together – this is the way that physicists are getting at the fundamental way that the measurements, the masses, the spins, the charges, all of this stuff by running them through these kinds of – an entanglement, right? Pamela Gay: That’s entirely right. When this started we were just starting to understand that the electric and magnetic forces were coupled. We were just starting to understand how charged generated magnetic fields, we were still only a generation into this. Where a lot of the discoverers in the late 1800s were still around as your senior emeritus faculty, and it was the new junior faculty who were playing with the new massive alternating currents that were being devised through new forms of generators. It was new, more precise machining apparatus that were allowing us to do more and more detailed experiments. And then of course photography. That was still in its infancy back then, but at least at this point infancy meant 40 years in when we hit the 1920s. So everything was still new, and when you coat it with silver, shiny. And they were working hard to figure out all the new characteristics of the charge that Benjamin Franklin had started working with in the 1700s. Fraser Cane: I mean, the calculations that Maxwell had done to really integrate magnetics and the electric field. Pamela Gay: And we were starting to get to the day of Dirac Notation to try and understand how you add together the magnetic moments. We were starting to get the Schrodinger Equation to describe the wave nature. All this was coming out. Fraser Cane: Dirac was the one who predicted antimatter right? Pamela Gay: I don’t know. That’s a different [inaudible] [00:28:34]. Fraser Cane: It’s a show on its own. I forget the date, 1928? Cool. Well, that was awesome, Pamela. That was great, and we’ll see you next week. Pamela Gay: Sounds good. Thanks for listening to Astronomy Cast, a nonprofit resource provided by Astrophered New Media Association, Frazier Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay. You can find show notes and transcripts for every episode at Astronomycast.com. You can email us at [email protected]. Tweet us at astronomycast. Like us on Facebook or circle us on Google+. We record our show live on Google+ every Monday at 12:00 p.m. Pacific, 3:00 p.m. Eastern, or 2000 Greenwich Mean Time. If you miss the live event, you can always catch up over at Cosmoquest.org. If you enjoy Astronomy Cast why not give us a donation. It helps us pay for bandwidth, transcripts, and show notes. Just click the donate link on the website. All donations are tax deductible for U.S. residents. You can support the show for free too. Write a review or recommend us to your friends. Every little bit helps. Click support the show on our website to see some suggestions. To subscribe to this show, point your podcatching software at Astronomycast.com/podcast.xml, or subscribe directly from [inaudible]. Our music is provided by Travis Serral, and the show is edited by Preston Gibson. [End of Audio] Duration: 30 minutes

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Published: 28 February 2022

The Stern–Gerlach experiment at 100

• Davide Castelvecchi 1  

Nature Reviews Physics volume  4 ,  pages 140–142 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

1597 Accesses

8 Citations

73 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Quantum mechanics

100 years ago, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach demonstrated that silver atoms have a quantized magnetic moment, as predicted from the Bohr–Sommerfeld model of the atom. But the correct interpretation of the result proved to be far more subtle — and revolutionary.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles

92,52 € per year

only 7,71 € per issue

Buy this article

• Purchase on SpringerLink
• Instant access to full article PDF

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Segrè, E. Otto Stern 1888–1969: A Biographical Memoir (US National Academy of Sciences, 1973).

Gerlach, W. & Stern, O. Der experimentelle Nachweis der Richtungsquantelung im Magnetfeld. Zeitschrift für Physik 9 , 349 (1922).

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

Stern, O. Ein Weg zur experimentellen Prüfung der Richtungsquantelung. Zeitschrift für Physik 7 , 249–253 (1921).

Friedrich, B. & Herschbach, D. Daedalus 127 , 165 (1998).

Margalit, Y. et al. Sci. Adv. 7 , eabg2879 (2021).

Friedrich, B. & Schmidt-Böcking, H. (eds) Molecular Beams in Physics and Chemistry (Springer, 2021).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author benefited from conversations with R. Folman, B. Friedrich, D. Herschbach, K. Jousten, D. Kaiser, Y. Margalit, M. Peskin, D. Rowe and H. Schmidt-Böcking.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Davide Castelvecchi is a reporter at Nature https://nature.com

Davide Castelvecchi

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Davide Castelvecchi .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Castelvecchi, D. The Stern–Gerlach experiment at 100. Nat Rev Phys 4 , 140–142 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00436-4

Download citation

Published : 28 February 2022

Issue Date : March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00436-4

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

• Über stern TV
• Der Moderator
• Studiotickets
• Datenschutzerklärung

stern TV Spezial vom 01.12.2022

Das Live-Experiment: Stimmen Sie hier ab

STERN TV SPEZIAL

Triage: wie entscheiden sie.

• IOP Publishing
• Follow us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter
• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Watch us on Youtube
• Enter e-mail address
• Enter password Show
• Remember me Forgot your password?
• Access more than 20 years of online content
• Manage which e-mail newsletters you want to receive
• Read about the big breakthroughs and innovations across 13 scientific topics
• Explore the key issues and trends within the global scientific community
• Choose which e-mail newsletters you want to receive

Reset your password

Please enter the e-mail address you used to register to reset your password

Note: The verification e-mail to change your password should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder.

If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact [email protected]

Registration complete

Thank you for registering with Physics World If you'd like to change your details at any time, please visit My account

• Quantum mechanics

How the Stern–Gerlach experiment made physicists believe in quantum mechanics

A century ago, the German physicists Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach carried out an experiment that gave an important credibility boost to the new-fangled notion of quantum mechanics. But as Hamish Johnston discovers, their now-famous experiment succeeded even if the physics on which it was based wasn’t quite right

Despite its counter-intuitive weirdness, quantum mechanics ranks as one of the most successful scientific theories of all time. Apart from forming the bedrock of our understanding of atoms and subatomic particles, it has spawned a host of technologies from the laser and transistor to quantum cryptography and quantum computers . But quantum mechanics wasn’t always held in such high regard.

At the start of the 20th century, when the subject was just getting off the ground, many scientists were sceptical of this new-fangled theory. Among the doubters was Otto Stern, who, along with fellow German physicist Walther Gerlach, devised a now-famous experiment to disprove the theory.

Carried out 100 years ago, the experiment involved the two physicists using beams of atoms to test a seemingly bizarre consequence of quantum mechanics known as the “space quantization of angular momentum”. As it happens, their initial interpretation of the experiment proved to be wrong. But their work spurred the development of quantum theory and today the “Stern–Gerlach experiment” is considered a classic of modern physics.

The Stern–Gerlach experiment is at the centre of the venerable conceptual puzzles of quantum mechanics – from the uncertainty principle to entanglement Bretislav Friedrich, Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin

“It’s at the centre of the venerable conceptual puzzles of quantum mechanics – from the uncertainty principle to entanglement,” says Bretislav Friedrich , a physicist from the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin who has written extensively about the experiment and Stern and Gerlach’s lives. The experiment, he says, was greeted with “pure astonishment” in 1922 – and it still astonishes physicists today.

Quantum weirdness

Born in 1888 in the Prussian city of Sohrau (now Żory in Poland), Stern was a physical chemist by training, who did a PhD at the University of Breslau on the osmotic pressure of solutions of carbon dioxide. In 1912 he moved to the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, attracted by Albert Einstein, who was based there at the time. By attending Einstein’s lecturers in Prague – and later at the ETH Zurich where both moved the following year – Stern quickly became exposed to the early ideas of quantum mechanics.

These ideas included Niels Bohr’s early model of the atom, which was the centrepiece of what is now called the “old quantum theory” . Familiar today as a basic representation of an atom, the Bohr model describes an atom as a dense, positively charged nucleus orbited by negatively charged electrons.

According to classical physics, such electrons should radiate energy and spiral into the nucleus in a matter of picoseconds. As that does not happen in reality, Bohr got around this problem by restricting the electrons to specific atomic orbits, more commonly referred to as orbitals.

Orbital quantization enabled Bohr to explain a phenomenon that had puzzled physicists and chemists for decades – the fact that atoms only absorb and emit light at a discrete set of optical wavelengths. Bohr’s model initially seemed like the right idea, as it allowed him to reproduce a formula for these wavelengths that had been derived in 1888 by the Swedish physicist Johannes Rydberg . The Rydberg formula had given the wavelengths in terms of a series of integers, which we now understand to be the principal quantum numbers of the atomic orbitals.

Quantum theory: weird and wonderful

But as Bohr’s model was studied and honed by leading physicists of the day, something odd became apparent. As a consequence of orbital quantization, it transpired that the component of an electron’s orbital angular momentum along a specific direction must also be quantized. In particular, according to Bohr’s model, an electron in the lowest energy orbital should have only two values of angular momentum along any arbitrary direction. These values would point in opposite directions in space, with no intermediate values permitted.

Known as space quantization, this phenomenon was viewed as even more bizarre than orbital quantization. In fact, Stern was so sceptical of the Bohr model that he vowed to quit physics if it proved to be correct. In 1914, after Stern parted company with Einstein and joined the brand-new University of Frankfurt, a practical opportunity arose for him to put space quantization to the test. Stern realized that if an electron’s orbital angular momentum showed space quantization, then so too would the magnetic moment of an atom.

Testing for space quantization

Stern’s work was initially disrupted by the First World War, when he served in the German army on the Russian front. But on his return to Frankfurt, Stern began experiments on beams of atoms, which had become possible thanks to the invention of the mercury-diffusion vacuum pump by the German physicist Wolfgang Gaede in 1915. This device allowed researchers to create high-vacuum conditions for the first time so that atoms could travel the length of an experimental apparatus without scattering from air molecules.

In 1920 Stern was joined in Frankfurt by Gerlach, who – like Stern – had also served in the First World War. Gerlach had become involved in atomic-beam experiments through his interest in the properties of atoms in magnetic solids. In particular, Gerlach wanted to see if atoms have magnetic moments and had begun thinking about an experiment involving a beam of bismuth atoms travelling through a region with an inhomogeneous magnetic field.

If an atom has a dipole magnetic moment, Gerlach reasoned, it will experience a torque due to the magnetic field and will therefore rotate. But if the magnetic field is not uniform, the force at one end of a dipole will be stronger than the torque at the opposite end. That will lead to a net force on the atom, which will deflect as its flies through the inhomogeneous magnetic field – with the size of the deflection revealing the magnitude of the atom’s magnetic moment.

In 1921 Stern realized that such an experiment would be a great way to test for space quantization. If atoms have magnetic moments that can point in any direction (as classical physics would suggest) then the beam of atoms would broaden continuously as it passes through the inhomogeneous magnetic field. However, if the magnetic moments of the atom are space quantized – pointing in opposite directions (up and down) along the inhomogeneous field – then the beam of atoms would be split in two.

As a result, the up and down atoms would be deflected in opposite directions, providing clear evidence for space quantization. So confident was Stern of his idea that he published a paper in the journal Zeitschrift für Physik ( 7 249) that presented meticulous calculations describing how it could be done using a beam of silver atoms. Gerlach was convinced and started to build his apparatus in 1921. Stern (a theorist) and Gerlach (an experimentalist) proved an effective combination.

Experimental breakthrough

In the original version of the Stern–Gerlach experiment, the two physicists vapourized silver in an oven and allowed some atoms to escape through a hole (see box 1). They then sent the atoms through a pair of collimators, which created a beam that travelled between the two pole pieces of an electromagnet. These pieces provided a magnetic field with the required high level of inhomogeneity because one had a groove cut into it, while the other had a sharp, knife-like edge and was held above the groove.

After passing through the magnet, the beam struck a detector plate where the presence of silver could be revealed by a chemical development process similar to that used in photography. But despite its simplicity, the experiment was fiendishly difficult to undertake.

The apparatus was small – about the size of a fountain pen – and had to be kept under high vacuum using two of Gaede’s diffusion pumps. In fact, the apparatus often broke, making it difficult to achieve the long run time needed to accumulate enough silver on the detector plate to create a visible image.

1 The original set-up

What’s more, the Stern–Gerlach experiment was expensive, made worse by the hyperinflation that was rampaging through post-war Germany. Money and donated equipment had to be secured from a range of sources including the Physikalischer Verein Frankfurt (Frankfurt Physics Society), ticket sales from popular lectures by Max Born, and donations from Einstein and Henry Goldman – an American banker and son of the co-founder of the financial firm Goldman–Sachs.

At first, Stern and Gerlach only saw their beam broadening when the inhomogeneous magnetic field was switched on. This was not the splitting predicted by quantum mechanics, but was an important achievement in its own right, being the first experimental evidence for atoms having magnetic moments. After Stern left Frankfurt in late 1921 to take up a professorship of theoretical physics at the University of Rostock, Gerlach realized that he could improve the measurement by replacing the round holes in the collimators with slits, which boosted the number of atoms in the beam.

And so, working alone one February night in 1922, Gerlach finally saw the beam splitting that had been predicted. He immediately sent a telegram to Stern saying: “Bohr is right after all”. Gerlach also created a postcard showing the split beam and sent it to Bohr, congratulating him for creating his model of the atom. Their paper presenting the results, published in December 1922 ( Zeit. Phys. 9 349) , provided the first experimental evidence for space quantization in a magnetic field – and thereby crucial evidence for quantum theory.

A new spin on things

The Stern–Gerlach experiment caused an immediate stir in the physics community, with Wolfgang Pauli, for example, quipping that  “This should convert even the non-believer Stern”. However, the explanation for the observed beam splitting using Bohr’s model was short-lived.

Other physicists, including Pauli and Paul Dirac, soon realized that the electron has an intrinsic angular momentum or spin – something that was not included Bohr’s model. What’s more, Bohr had been wrong to predict that the ground state of the silver atom has orbital angular momentum; it does not.

Today we know that the splitting that Stern and Gerlach saw in their experiment is actually caused by the spin of silver’s unpaired electron. Indeed, the Stern–Gerlach experiment is now interpreted as evidence of electron spin, rather than as proof of space quantization.

As so often in physics, even supposedly “wrong” results can still lead to progress. What’s more, the work opened the door to a huge variety of other findings, including showing the momentum transfer that occurs if an atom emits or absorbs a photon.

Stern went on to carry out the world’s first matter-wave experiments with atoms when he scattered beams of atoms off the surfaces of crystals, which confirmed the principle of wave-particle duality. Later, in 1933, he measured the magnetic dipole moment of the proton using a set-up similar to the Stern–Gerlach experiment. He found it to be larger than expected, which suggested that the proton is not a point-like particle – as had been assumed at the time – but rather has internal structure. This discovery led Stern to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1943 .

By that time, Stern – who was Jewish by birth – was based at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh in the US, having fled Germany in 1933 as Nazi repression of the Jews intensified. While at Carnegie, he extended his work on the magnetic dipole moment of the proton to its heavier cousin, the deuteron. Stern’s lab in Pittsburgh also confirmed Maxwell–Boltzmann velocity distribution of particles in an ideal gas. He died in the US in 1969.

As for Gerlach, he went on to measure the magnetic moment of atomic bismuth and several other metals using the atomic beam technique. He also did experiments on the radiation pressure of light and continued his interest in magnetism and condensed-matter physics. His career later took him to the universities of Tübingen and Munich. Despite being nominated 31 times between 1924 and 1944, Gerlach missed out on a Nobel prize.

[The pair benefitted from] Stern’s ideas on the one hand and Gerlach’s realism and skills in the lab as well as a – sometimes stubborn – determination to make things work Bretislav Friedrich, Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin

Like Stern, Gerlach was impacted by Nazism – but in a very different way. Although he never joined the Nazi party and rejected the idea of “Jewish science” , Gerlach headed Germany’s nuclear research programme in the final years of the Second World War. He ended up being interned by the Allied Forces at Farm Hall in England along with nine other German physicists suspected of being involved in Germany’s nuclear weapons programme including Max von Laue and Werner Heisenberg .

The quantum heretics

After the war, Gerlach returned to academic research, spending the bulk of his career back at Munich where he played important roles in rebuilding German science. In 1957, he, von Laue and Heisenberg were part of a group of 18 leading German physicists who signed the Göttingen Manifesto , which rejected a proposal by the then chancellor Konrad Adenauer to arm Germany with nuclear weapons. Gerlach died aged 90 in 1979.

Lasting impact

Apart from shaping the course of modern science, the Stern–Gerlach experiment has also had a huge practical impact. Indeed, Stern is widely viewed as one of the founders of experimental atomic, molecular and nuclear physics , having shown how molecular beams can be used to quantitatively study matter without resorting to spectroscopy. “Sorting states via space quantization is ubiquitous,” says Friedrich, with nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic-resonance imaging being the most direct descendants of the classic experiment.

Friedrich also credits the Stern–Gerlach experiment for introducing principles that influenced other areas of science, such as the development of the maser and laser. And although Gerlach missed out on a Nobel prize, Friedrich says his recruitment by Stern was a “stroke of luck” for atomic physics, with the pair having exceptional complementary talents. “[They benefitted from] Stern’s ideas on the one hand and Gerlach’s realism and skills in the lab as well as a – sometimes stubborn – determination to make things work.”

• For more on the Stern–Gerlach experiment, see Molecular Beams in Physics and Chemistry: From Otto Stern’s Pioneering Exploits to Present-Day Feats edited by Bretislav Friedrich and Horst Schmidt-Böcking (2022 Springer).

Want to read more?

Note: The verification e-mail to complete your account registration should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder.

If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact [email protected] .

• E-mail Address

The Nobel Prize for Physics

Explore our Nobel prize coverage

• Diversity and inclusion

The joy of connecting quantum black dots

Climate tipping points: retreating from the brink and accelerating positive change, discover more from physics world.

• Personalities

Gems from the Physics World archive: Isaac Asimov

NIST publishes first set of ‘finalized’ post-quantum encryption standards

IHEP-SDU in search of ‘quantum advantage’ to open new frontiers in high-energy physics

Related jobs, assistant professors in computational physics, international faculty position, uestc, assistant/associate professor, related events.

• Education and outreach | Conference International conference on Latest Advancements in Science, Management, Commerce and Educational Research (LASMCER) 2—3 November 2024 | Montreal, Canada
• Materials | Symposium AVS 70th International Symposium & Exhibition 3—8 November 2024 | Tampa, US
• Medical physics | Virtual event Virtual International Day of Medical Physics 2024 7 November 2024

Howard Stern

Official site features news, show personalities, hot topics and image archive from The Howard Stern Show.

• Listen Live
• HOWARD 100/101

VIDEO: ‘Tonight Show’ Host Jimmy Fallon Returns to the Stern Show

Comedian, musician, and tv star talks holiday album, tonightmares, and 'snl' great john belushi.

Plenty of “Saturday Night Live” fans believe Jimmy Fallon is one of the 50-year-old sketch comedy show’s greatest alumni, but when the beloved funnyman, musician, author, and late-night star sat down with Howard on Monday he told listeners he felt that legendary comedian John Belushi was the best to ever take the Studio 8H stage.

“I loved Belushi’s energy. I love that he could sing,” Fallon said of the founding “SNL” cast member, who tragically passed away at the age of 33 back in 1982.

“You guys would’ve been friends,” Howard suggested.

“We would’ve been in trouble, yeah,” Fallon laughed before revealing he once visited Belushi’s grave on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. He stopped by with “Fever Pitch” director Peter Farrelly, co-star Drew Barrymore, and a six-pack of beer. After Farrelly and Barrymore went home, Jimmy seized an opportunity to strike up a conversation with Belushi’s spirit.

“What did you say to Belushi?” Howard wondered.

“I just said thanks, and I love him, [and] I wish he was around … I wanted to tell him that ‘Saturday Night Live’ was doing well and people were still having fun,” Fallon revealed, adding, “[The conversation] was great. One sided, but you know.”

Jimmy and Howard chatted for over two hours Monday morning, treating listeners to a free-flowing conversation covering everything from Fallon’s favorite songs and celebrity impressions to various exciting projects he has in the works, including Tonightmares, a haunted Midtown maze, and “Holiday Seasoning,” an upcoming Yuletide album. Hitting shelves on Friday, the 16-track album boasts collaborations with artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Ariana Grande to “Weird Al” Yankovic and Justin Timberlake. Jimmy treated Howard and his listeners to a live performance of one of its songs, “Chipmunks & Chestnuts,” before revealing he’d also teamed up with SiriusXM to curate his very own holiday station, Holiday Seasoning Radio (channel 17).

Jimmy also had plenty to say about the ebbs and flows of his unparalleled career in show business, from working with Queen Latifah on “Taxi” to channeling Adam Sandler in his “SNL” audition. Fallon would spend six years on “Saturday Night Live” where he co-anchored “Weekend Update” with Tina Fey and starred in a some of that era’s most memorable bits, which he was all too happy to discuss with Howard on Monday. Check out more great moments from their conversation (below).

Mick Jagger, More Cowbell, and Debbie Downer

Playing a Cop in ‘Taxi’

‘Holiday Seasoning’

Jimmy Fallon’s SiriusXM station Holiday Seasoning Radio (Channel 17) and album “Holiday Seasoning” arrive Friday, Nov. 1. Tonightmares runs through Thursday, Oct. 31.

Also Check Out...

Knot Happening

Theater of the Mund

6th Avenue Freeze-Out

Tuesday on Howard 100

By signing up, I agree to receive newsletters and marketing emails from the Howard Stern Show and accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

The Ultimate Howard Stern Show Fan Experience!

See Vice President Kamala Harris’s Full Interview

Check Out What’s Playing Today

Michael Rapaport Talks Acting on the Wrap Up Show

Bruce Springsteen Performs ‘Brilliant Disguise’

Late Night Hosts on the Howard Stern Show

Charli xcx Makes Her Stern Show Debut

Bruce Springsteen & Patti Scialfa Talk Marriage

VIDEO: Steve Unveils a New ‘Shaky Ronnie’ Puppet

Chris Stapleton Returns to the Stern Show

Charli xcx Weighs in on Bowen Yang ‘SNL’ Parody

Fooey in the Rain

VIDEO: Gary Spent Hours in the Rain for a Concert

• stern Crime
• Gesellschaft
• Stiftung stern

Bayern München vs. Mainz 05: So können Sie das Spiel im Free-TV sehen

Dfb-pokal so sehen sie bayern münchen gegen mainz 05 im free tv.

• 30. Oktober 2024

Dank DFB-Pokal zur Englischen Woche. Am Dienstag und Mittwoch kämpfen die verbliebenen 32 Mannschaften um den Einzug ins Achtelfinale. Dieses Jahr außergewöhnlich: Die Bundesligisten machen das Rennen um den "Pott" (fast) unter sich aus. Nur drei Mannschaften, die nicht in der 1. oder 2. Bundesliga spielen, sind noch dabei: Dynamo Dresden und Arminia Bielefeld spielen derzeit in der 3. Liga. Mit Kickers Offenbach ist nur ein Amateurverein in der zweiten Runde des DFB-Pokals vertreten. 

DFB-Pokal: Mainz 05 vs. Bayern München live im Free-TV

Die insgesamt acht Spiele werden am Mittwoch jeweils zu zwei Uhrzeiten angepfiffen: Vier Partien um 18 Uhr, vier weitere um 20.45 Uhr.

Die Duelle versprechen viel Spannung: Unter anderem empfängt der SC Freiburg den Hamburger SV und Eintracht Frankfurt trifft auf Borussia Mönchengladbach (jeweils Anstoß 18 Uhr). 

Am späteren Abend greift auch der Rekordmeister ein: Der FC Bayern München gastiert bei Mainz 05 . Dieses Spiel ist in Deutschland kostenfrei zu empfangen, das ZDF zeigt die Partie im linearen TV und in der Mediathek.

DFB-Pokals, zweite Runde – alle Spiele auf einen Blick:

Mittwoch, 30. Oktober:

• SC Freiburg vs. Hamburger SV (18 Uhr, Sky)
• Hertha BSC vs. 1. FC Heidenheim (18 Uhr, Sky)
• Eintracht Frankfurt vs. Borussia Mönchengladbach (18 Uhr, Sky)
• SC Paderborn vs. Werder Bremen (18 Uhr, Sky)
• Arminia Bielefeld vs. Union Berlin (20.45 Uhr, Sky)
• Dynamo Dresden vs. Darmstadt 98 (20.45 Uhr, Sky)
• TSG Hoffenheim vs. 1. FC Nürnberg (20.45 Uhr, Sky)
• 1. FSV Mainz 05 vs. Bayern München (20.45 Uhr, ZDF)

Quelle: DFB

• FC Bayern München
• 1. FSV Mainz 05

Vergleichsportal

PRODUKTE & TIPPS

• Wasserdichte Kopfhörer
• Wattmesser Rennrad
• Vibrationsboard
• Gadgets fürs Joggen im Dunkeln
• Klimmzugstange für die Tür
• Kopfstandhocker
• Dart Training
• Arm und Beintrainer
• EMS Training

Gutscheine für Sport-Shops

Mehr zum Thema

BVB Pokal-Aus in Wolfsburg: Dortmunder Krise geht weiter

Borussia Dortmund in der Krise Sahins K.o.(-Spiel)?

DFB-Pokal Losglück für Titelverteidiger Leverkusen – Bayern müssen nach Mainz

DFB-Team Haste Töne? Was Joshua Kimmichs Führungstil für die Nationalmannschaft bedeutet

Eintracht Frankfurt Omar Marmoush – wie der "Tornado" über die Bayern hinwegfegte

Bundesliga 5. Spieltag Werder-Wahnsinn im Kraichgau – Eintracht Frankfurt robbt sich an München ran

Franz Beckenbauer Die einmalige Karriere des "Kaisers" in Bildern

Verstorbene Trainerlegende "Andere erziehen ihre Kinder zweisprachig, ich beidfüßig" – Daums beste Sprüche

Fußballmode Das neue Auswärtstrikot der Bayern – wie Altmetall und schlechtes Sushi

Wissenscommunity, fußball-bundesliga: alonso fordert hoeneß: "fußball-deutschland" freut sich, schiedsrichter: viel ärger im dfb-pokal: ohne var ist auch nicht gut, fußball-bundesliga: verunsicherung in wolfsburg: die vw-krise und der vfl, formel 1: kompromisslos-kampf um den titel: zieht verstappen es durch, major league baseball: krawalle in los angeles nach final-sieg der dodgers, gala zum ballon d'or: vergleich mit donald trump: hummels kritisiert real madrid, atp-tour: tennisprofi zverev in paris weiter - struff scheidet aus, wasserdichte kopfhörer: fünf modelle fürs schwimm-training, bvb: pokal-aus in wolfsburg – dortmunder krise geht weiter, inhalte im überblick.

Zugang zu stern + statt 11,96 € nur 1 €

• Alles von stern + mit erstklassigen Inhalten von GEO und Capital
• 4 Wochen testen, dann 2,99 € je Woche
• jederzeit kündbar

Bereits registriert? Hier anmelden