What is quantum physics?

Picture of how particles interact to make the world

 Quantum physics is the physics which explains how everything works :  the best description we have of  nature of  particles which make up matter and the forces with which they interact.

Quantum physics means how atoms work, and so why chemistry   and  biology work as they do with it.  You, me at some level at   least, we’re all dancing to the quantum tone. If we want to explain how electrons flow through a computer chip, how photons of light get converted to electrical current in a solar panel or amplify themselves in a  laser, or  just how the sun keeps burning, you will need to use quantum physics.

The difficulty and, for physicists, the fun starts here. To begin with, there is no single quantum theory. There is quantum mechanics, the basic mathematical  framework that underlies it all , which was first discovered in the 1920s by Niel's Bohr, Werner Heisenberg , Erwin Schrödinger and others . It characterise simple things such as how the position or  momentum of a single particle or  group of few  particles  changes over time. 

But to understand how much things work in the real world,  quantum mechanics must combine with other elements of physics basically Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which explains what happens when things move very fast  to create what are known as quantum field theories.

Three different quantum field theories deals with three of  four basic forces by that matter interacts: electromagnetism, which explains how atoms held together, the strong nuclear force, which explains the overall stability of the nucleus at the heart of the atom and the weak nuclear force, which explains why some atoms undergo radioactive decay  . 

Over the past five decades or so these 3 theories have brought together in a ramshackle coalition known as the 'standard model' of particle physics. For all the impression that this model is slightly hetogether with sticky tape, it is the most accuratel hold tested picture of matter’s basic working that’s ever been   devised.  It's crowning glory came in 2012 with the discover of the :Higgs boson, the particle that gives all other basic particles their mass, whose existence was predicted on the basis of quantum field theories as far as 1964.