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What is Quantum Mechanics?
Live Science
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3 months ago
Astrophysicist Paul Sutter explains Quantum Mechanics - the body of scientific laws that describe the wacky behavior of photons, electrons and the other particles that make up the universe.
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00:00
Quantum mechanics is our fundamental framework for understanding the physics, the behavior
00:07
of the very, very small.
00:09
I'm talking like atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles.
00:15
I'm Paul Sutter and this is Paul Explains, the show where I, you know, explain.
00:23
There's three big pieces to quantum mechanics.
00:27
One of the pieces is in the name itself, this idea of quantization, that certain properties
00:36
of subatomic systems like energy or angular momentum come in discrete levels or packets
00:45
or what we call quanta, hence the name quantization.
00:49
For example, an electron in an atom can't have any old energy that it feels like.
00:57
No.
00:58
It can have only certain energy levels.
01:01
That's because the energy levels in an atom are quantized.
01:04
This is a fundamental core tenant of quantum mechanics and it's very different than the
01:10
physics of the macroscopic world.
01:13
Another key component of quantum mechanics is something we call wave particle duality,
01:18
where tiny things sometimes act like particles, like tiny little bullets, tiny little billiard
01:25
balls, tiny little ping pong balls bouncing around doing everything that particles do and
01:31
sometimes also act like waves where they're more sloshing around or they interfere with each
01:38
other.
01:39
So depending on what you're looking for and how you're looking for it, sometimes, sometimes
01:45
it might act like a little bit of both.
01:48
And the last bit is that quantum mechanics and subatomic systems are ruled by probabilities
01:55
and uncertainty.
01:56
Up here in the macroscopic world, if you can know exactly where something is and exactly
02:02
how fast it's moving, and you can predict, using the laws of physics, exactly where it's
02:08
going to be, exactly where it's going to go.
02:10
But you don't get that kind of precise knowledge in the subatomic world.
02:17
You don't always know exactly where something is, like an electron.
02:20
You don't always know where an electron is or how fast it's going.
02:25
And once you do know where it is, or at least have some idea, you don't know exactly where
02:31
it's going to go.
02:32
Instead it's going to be a range of probabilities.
02:36
Our understanding of quantum mechanics underlies so many things.
02:43
Atomic and nuclear power, all of that is thanks to our understanding of quantum mechanics.
02:48
Microchips, semiconductors, lasers and LED, and even biology.
02:54
So a bunch of physicists playing around in the early 20th century gave us this major cornerstone
03:01
of many fields of science.
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