Quantum Mechanics has become a sexy science of late, but what is it? It's basically a branch of science that deals with the very, very small. It's collection of principles and theories used to describe the behaviour of matter and energy at the subatomic level. Classical physics is sufficient to describe the world around us on a large or "macro" scale, but as we began to probe a little deeper, we found that our models started to fall apart when dealing with the very small, quantum level. The principles of QM are difficult to wrap your head around because the effects that they describe just can't be seen on a scale that we are used to. QM is concerned with "quanta": Discrete, indivisible units of energy. For example, light, which was always thought to be a wave of energy, can actually also behave as though it is made up of particles. We call these photons. In classic physics, it is impossible for something to be both a wave and a particle, but in quantum mechanics, it's perfectly fine. The thing is about quantum theory is that we can observe its effects, without knowing why a lot of them occur at the moment. It's a little bit like chemistry in the 18th century, we knew that certain things would happen when we poked around certain laws, but we just didn't fully understand the mechanisms behind it. The hope is that one day we will be able to fit our observations of the quantum world into our broader picture of the universe, unifying the classical and quantum worlds. Are there any bits of science jargon that you've noticed flying around? Can you explain it to the class? Let us know in the comments. Want to write for What Culture Science? Click here to find out how you could get paid to write about what you love.Hey, you, you look like the sociable type. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for more science in your eye parts.
