Everything you thought you knew about physics is a lie

Imagine this. You’re sitting under a tree when all of a sudden an apple hits you on the head. Then something strikes you; why is it that apples fall from trees. It’s gravity! You’re brilliant, and you’ve just figured *all* there is to physics. Hmmm, not quite.

Completely accurate depiction of how Newton discovered gravity. Also, I need to clarify that obviously gravity does exist. All I’m trying to say is that there’s just so much more to it than what we often think!

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. –Richard Feynman, famous physicist and Nobel laureate

So What’s Quantum Physics, Really?

Can you imagine if we could feel the rotation of the Earth?

The Bare Bone Basics

This was an amazing discovery. We can go smaller than atoms and even smaller than some particles called protons and neutrons that we used to think were the LEGO blocks of our world!

What Even Are Subatomic Particles?

The Best of Both Worlds: Wave-Particle Duality!

Let’s help both ourselves and this subatomic object understand what the heck wave-particle duality means!

They’re Waves: The Double Slit Experiment

This is what we initially thought the double slit experiment would look like. (Adapted from Wikipedia)
Isn’t this so cool? (Adapted from study.com and Wikipedia)

They’re Particles: The Photoelectric Effect

Inspired by Hyperphysics

We’re All Made Of Just 3 Things

That’s an atom! By the way, this isn’t to scale! Electrons are tiny compared to protons and neutrons.
Protons are made up of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark. It’s the opposite for neutrons!
I wonder if something’s missing…

Let’s Do Some Math!

This is the Schrödinger equation in all of its confusing glory. But don’t be scared of all the symbols, we’ll do it together!

We Did It!

TL;DR

  • Quantum physics and quantum mechanics provides an explanation for how everything works at a subatomic level– that’s when we got even smaller than an atom
  • The field relies a lot on probability and waves 🌊
  • The wave-particle duality tells us that subatomic objects act like both particles and waves: to find their approximate position and momentum we treat them like waves. But like we saw in the photoelectric effect experiment, they also act as little packets of energy, or quanta
  • We don’t see the effects of quantum mechanics at our level (larger than subatomic) because everything around is has random waves that cancel each other out (read more here!)
  • The smallest, indivisible building blocks of the universe are the elementary particles, but we’re basically just made of electrons, up quarks, and down quarks

--

--

Science communicator trying to learn something new everyday | Published in Start It Up, Predict & The Writing Cooperative

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Parmin Sedigh

Science communicator trying to learn something new everyday | Published in Start It Up, Predict & The Writing Cooperative