Question: Can you explain what quantum mechanics is and why we use it??

Struan Simpson answered on 12 Mar 2020:

So quantum mechanics is all about how physics works on a subatomic level – in other words, it’s the physics of particles like electrons, protons, or neutrons.

It turns out that the physics we use in our day-to-day life to describe things like gravity doesn’t quite work out when we try to apply the same concepts to these subatomic particles. Because they’re so incredibly tiny, they behave really differently to how we might expect them to!

There’s still a lot about quantum mechanics that we as scientists don’t fully understand, and it’s a really confusing topic when you first start learning about it. However, it describes the behaviour of subatomic particles really, really well, so we use it to understand why they behave the way they do.

For me in my research, I learn about and use quantum mechanics to try and understand how energy behaves in the materials I make. I wouldn’t be able to do this without quantum mechanics, so it’s essential to scientists like me!