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Physics Department, Trinity College Dublin.WHAT IS QUANTUM THEORY ABOUT? |
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| Introduction | Energy Quantisation | The Uncertainty Principle | Particle-Wave Duality | | Indeterminacy | Schrödinger's Cat | |
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Quantum Theorytells us about the nature of the microscopic constituents of matter, from atoms and molecules to atomic nuclei and quarks. These tiny particles behave in a totally different way from objects in our ordinary everyday experience. What we have learnt about matter on atomic and subatomic scales has produced new ideas about how the universe evolved and led to technological advances in nuclear physics and materials science which have changed the way we live.
On the other hand Quantum Theory has shown that light is not just an electromagnetic wave behaves in some ways like a particle - the photon. This insight has produced the field of Quantum Optics, which has spawned the laser and optoelectronics. Applications to cryptography and computing are still in an experimental stage. Quantum Theory originated with Planck in the first year of the 20th century, but the full mathematical expression of Quantum Mechanics did not appear until 1926, when Schrödinger and Heisenberg came up with two different but equivalent versions. |
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