3/21/2019 What Is Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum Physics Defined, Explained

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What Is Quantum Mechanics?

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By Robert Coolman, Live Science Contributor | September 26, 2014 06:36pm ET
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What Is Quantum Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics relating to the very small.
Mechanics?
ANIMALS It results in what may appear to be some very strange conclusions about
Quantum mechanics
is the body of the physical world. At the scale of atoms and electrons, many of the
scientific laws that
HISTORY equations of classical mechanics, which describe how things move at
describe the wacky
behavior of photons,
everyday sizes and speeds, cease to be useful. In classical mechanics,
electrons and the objects exist in a specific place at a specific time. However, in quantum
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other particles that mechanics, objects instead exist in a haze of probability; they have a
make up the
universe. certain chance of being at point A, another chance of being at point B and
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Credit: agsandrew |
Shutterstock

Three revolutionary principles

Quantum mechanics (QM) developed over many decades, beginning as a set of controversial
mathematical explanations of experiments that the math of classical mechanics could not
explain. It began at the turn of the 20th century, around the same time that Albert Einstein
published his theory of relativity, a separate mathematical revolution in physics that describes
the motion of things at high speeds. Unlike relativity, however, the origins of QM cannot be
attributed to any one scientist. Rather, multiple scientists contributed to a foundation of three
revolutionary principles that gradually gained acceptance and experimental verification between
1900 and 1930. They are:

Quantized properties: Certain properties, such as position, speed and color, can sometimes
only occur in specific, set amounts, much like a dial that "clicks" from number to number. This
challenged a fundamental assumption of classical mechanics, which said that such properties
should exist on a smooth, continuous spectrum. To describe the idea that some properties
"clicked" like a dial with specific settings, scientists coined the word "quantized."

Particles of light: Light can sometimes behave as a particle. This was initially met with harsh
criticism, as it ran contrary to 200 years of experiments showing that light behaved as a wave;
much like ripples on the surface of a calm lake. Light behaves similarly in that it bounces off
walls and bends around corners, and that the crests and troughs of the wave can add up or
cancel out. Added wave crests result in brighter light, while waves that cancel out produce
darkness. A light source can be thought of as a ball on a stick being rhythmically dipped in the

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3/21/2019 What Is Quantum Mechanics? Quantum Physics Defined, Explained

center of a lake. The color emitted corresponds to the distance between the crests, which is
determined by the speed of the ball's rhythm.

Waves of matter: Matter can also behave as a wave. This ran counter to the roughly 30 years
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of experiments showing that matter (such as electrons) exists as particles.

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Quantized properties?
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In 1900, German physicist Max Planck sought to explain the distribution of colors emitted over
the spectrum in the glow of red-hot and white-hot objects, such as light-bulb filaments. When
makingEARTH
PLANET physical sense of the equation he had derived to describe this distribution, Planck
realized it implied that combinations of only certain colors (albeit a great number of them) were
emitted, specifically those that were whole-number multiples of some base value. Somehow,
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colors were quantized! This was unexpected because light was understood to act as a wave,
meaning that values of color should be a continuous spectrum. What could be
ANIMALS
forbidding atoms from producing the colors between these whole-number multiples? This
seemed so strange that Planck regarded quantization as nothing more than a mathematical
trick. According to Helge Kragh in his 2000 article in Physics World magazine, "Max Planck, the
HISTORY
Reluctant Revolutionary," "If a revolution occurred in physics in December 1900, nobody
seemed to notice it. Planck was no exception …"
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Planck's equation also contained a number that would later become very important to future
development of QM; today, it's known as "Planck's Constant."
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Quantization helped to explain other mysteries of physics. In 1907, Einstein used Planck's
hypothesis of quantization to explain why the temperature of a solid changed by different
amounts if you put the same amount of heat into the material but changed the starting
temperature.

Since the early 1800s, the science of spectroscopy had shown that different elements emit and
absorb specific colors of light called "spectral lines." Though spectroscopy was a reliable
method for determining the elements contained in objects such as distant stars, scientists were
puzzled about why each element gave off those specific lines in the first place. In 1888,
Johannes Rydberg derived an equation that described the spectral lines emitted by hydrogen,
though nobody could explain why the equation worked. This changed in 1913 when Niels
Bohr applied Planck's hypothesis of quantization to Ernest Rutherford's 1911 "planetary" model
of the atom, which postulated that electrons orbited the nucleus the same way that planets orbit
the sun. According to Physics 2000 (a site from the University of Colorado), Bohr proposed that
electrons were restricted to "special" orbits around an atom's nucleus. They could "jump"
between special orbits, and the energy produced by the jump caused specific colors of light,
observed as spectral lines. Though quantized properties were invented as but a mere
mathematical trick, they explained so much that they became the founding principle of QM.

Particles of light?
In 1905, Einstein published a paper, "Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the
Emission and Transformation of Light," in which he envisioned light traveling not as a wave, but
as some manner of "energy quanta." This packet of energy, Einstein suggested, could "be

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3/21/2019 What Is Quantum Mechanics? Quantum Physics Defined, Explained

absorbed or generated only as a whole," specifically when an atom "jumps" between quantized
vibration rates. This would also apply, as would be shown a few years later, when an electron
"jumps" between quantized orbits. Under this model, Einstein's "energy quanta" contained the
energy difference of the jump; when divided by Planck’s constant, that energy difference
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determined the color of light carried by those quanta.
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With this new way to envision light, Einstein offered insights into the behavior of nine different
phenomena, including the specific colors that Planck described being emitted from a light-bulb
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filament. It also explained how certain colors of light could eject electrons off metal surfaces, a
phenomenon known as the "photoelectric effect." However, Einstein wasn't wholly justified in
taking this
PLANET EARTHleap, said Stephen Klassen, an associate professor of physics at the University of
Winnipeg. In a 2008 paper, "The Photoelectric Effect: Rehabilitating the Story for the Physics
Classroom," Klassen states that Einstein's energy quanta aren't necessary for explaining all of
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those nine phenomena. Certain mathematical treatments of light as a wave are still capable of
describing both the specific colors that Planck described being emitted from a light-bulb
ANIMALS
filament and the photoelectric effect. Indeed, in Einstein's controversial winning of the
1921 Nobel Prize, the Nobel committee only acknowledged "his discovery of the law of the
photoelectric effect," which specifically did not rely on the notion of energy quanta.
HISTORY

Roughly two decades after Einstein's paper, the term "photon" was popularized for describing
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energy quanta, thanks to the 1923 work of Arthur Compton, who showed that light scattered by
an electron beam changed in color. This showed that particles of light (photons) were indeed
colliding with particles of matter (electrons), thus confirming Einstein's hypothesis. By now, it
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was clear that light could behave both as a wave and a particle, placing light's "wave-particle
duality" into the foundation of QM.

Waves of matter?
Since the discovery of the electron in 1896, evidence that all matter existed in the form of
particles was slowly building. Still, the demonstration of light's wave-particle duality made
scientists question whether matter was limited to acting only as particles. Perhaps wave-particle
duality could ring true for matter as well? The first scientist to make substantial headway with
this reasoning was a French physicist named Louis de Broglie. In 1924, de Broglie used the
equations of Einstein's theory of special relativity to show that particles can exhibit wave-like
characteristics, and that waves can exhibit particle-like characteristics. Then in 1925, two
scientists, working independently and using separate lines of mathematical thinking, applied de
Broglie's reasoning to explain how electrons whizzed around in atoms (a phenomenon that was
unexplainable using the equations of classical mechanics). In Germany, physicist Werner
Heisenberg (teaming with Max Born and Pascual Jordan) accomplished this by developing
"matrix mechanics." Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger developed a similar theory called
"wave mechanics." Schrödinger showed in 1926 that these two approaches were equivalent
(though Swiss physicist Wolfgang Pauli sent an unpublished result to Jordan showing that
matrix mechanics was more complete).

The Heisenberg-Schrödinger model of the atom, in which each electron acts as a wave
(sometimes referred to as a "cloud") around the nucleus of an atom replaced the Rutherford-
Bohr model. One stipulation of the new model was that the ends of the wave that forms an
electron must meet. In "Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry, 3rd Ed." (W.A. Benjamin, 1981),
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Melvin Hanna writes, "The imposition of the boundary conditions has restricted the energy to
discrete values." A consequence of this stipulation is that only whole numbers of crests and
troughs are allowed, which explains why some properties are quantized. In the Heisenberg-
Schrödinger model of the atom, electrons obey a "wave function" and occupy "orbitals" rather
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than orbits. Unlike the circular orbits of the Rutherford-Bohr model, atomic orbitals have a
variety of shapes ranging from spheres to dumbbells to daisies.
TECH

In 1927, Walter Heitler and Fritz London further developed wave mechanics to show how
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atomic orbitals could combine to form molecular orbitals, effectively showing why atoms bond to
one another to form molecules. This was yet another problem that had been unsolvable using
the math
PLANET of classical mechanics. These insights gave rise to the field of "quantum chemistry."
EARTH

The uncertainty
STRANGE NEWS principle
Also in 1927, Heisenberg made another major contribution to quantum physics. He reasoned
ANIMALS
that since matter acts as waves, some properties, such as an electron's position and speed, are
"complementary," meaning there's a limit (related to Planck's constant) to how well the
precision of each property can be known. Under what would come to be called
HISTORY
"Heisenberg's uncertainty principle," it was reasoned that the more precisely an electron's
position is known, the less precisely its speed can be known, and vice versa. This uncertainty
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principle applies to everyday-size objects as well, but is not noticeable because the lack of
precision is extraordinarily tiny. According to Dave Slaven of Morningside College (Sioux City,
SPACE
IA), if a baseball's speed is known to within a precision of 0.1 mph, the maximum precision to
which it is possible to know the ball's position is 0.000000000000000000000000000008
millimeters.

Onward
The principles of quantization, wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle ushered in a
new era for QM. In 1927, Paul Dirac applied a quantum understanding of electric and magnetic
fields to give rise to the study of "quantum field theory" (QFT), which treated particles (such as
photons and electrons) as excited states of an underlying physical field. Work in QFT continued
for a decade until scientists hit a roadblock: Many equations in QFT stopped making physical
sense because they produced results of infinity. After a decade of stagnation, Hans Bethe
made a breakthrough in 1947 using a technique called "renormalization." Here, Bethe realized
that all infinite results related to two phenomena (specifically "electron self-energy" and
"vacuum polarization") such that the observed values of electron mass and electron charge
could be used to make all the infinities disappear.

Since the breakthrough of renormalization, QFT has served as the foundation for developing
quantum theories about the four fundamental forces of nature: 1) electromagnetism, 2) the
weak nuclear force, 3) the strong nuclear force and 4) gravity. The first insight provided by QFT
was a quantum description of electromagnetism through "quantum electrodynamics" (QED),
which made strides in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Next was a quantum description of the
weak nuclear force, which was unified with electromagnetism to build "electroweak theory"
(EWT) throughout the 1960s. Finally came a quantum treatment of the strong nuclear force
using "quantum chromodynamics" (QCD) in the 1960s and 1970s. The theories of QED, EWT
and QCD together form the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics. Unfortunately, QFT
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3/21/2019 What Is Quantum Mechanics? Quantum Physics Defined, Explained

has yet to produce a quantum theory of gravity. That quest continues today in the studies of
string theory and loop quantum gravity.

Robert Coolman is a graduate researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing up

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his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He writes about math, science and how they interact with
history. Follow Robert @PrimeViridian. Follow us @LiveScience, Facebook & Google+.
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Additional resources
HEALTH
This TED-Ed video explains the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
PLANET Take
EARTHan online course in Quantum Physics I from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
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Learn more about the quantum mechanical model of the atom and how it differs from the
Rutherford-Bohrs model.
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