Video: Brian Cox's guide to quantum mechanics | Science | guardian.co.uk
"Imagine a world where particles can pop into existence seemingly out of nothing and disappear just as quickly. Imagine a world where you can be everywhere in the universe at the same time and yet nobody can know precisely where you are. According to our best theory of nature the Standard Model of Particle Physics, this is exactly how the world behaves because at its heart lies the strange theory of quantum mechanics."
"1905 Photoelectric Effect: ... Einstein said light is a stream of particles (photons) not a wave. The energy of each wave depends only on the colour, not on the intensity of the light.
Instead of thinking of forces in terms of forcefields as Newton and Maxwell had done, in 1940 Quantum Electrodynamics QED was invented by Feynmann. QED explains all of physics outside the nucleus except gravity and explains interactions of matter particles with one another via the electromagnetic force which drives all of chemistry. A theory of (almost) everything! When electrons get close to each other they move away because like particles repel one another. QED explained electromagnetic force in terms of particles. This repelling action is caused by a quantum of light, a photon being exchanged between the electrons.
By 1970s QED explained the strong nuclear forces which requires 8 Gluon particles and the 3 weak nuclear force particles - the W+, W- and Z. With E=mc2 means that if you smash particles together you get energy. The gluon was found in the 1970s, the W and Z particles in the 1980s. From Einstein's equation, a lot of energy is required to make a lot of mass, the W and Z particles were like the gluon and photon but with more mass than an atom of copper.
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