Way back in college I found that some topics were beyond my comprehension. One of those topics was semiconductor electronics. (There is a story there for another time) This was complemented a couple of years later with advanced physics regarding quantum topics. Over the years, I have continued to casually follow up on what was happening in this area as it is core to many of the developments we use today.
But if you asked me to define or describe quantum mechanics or physics, I would plead ignorance.
I just caught an article in my inbox that tries to explain some of this. I’ve provided a synopsis below, but the real thing is much better. You do not need to be a nuclear scientist to read it (although it might help) as it’s written for a general audience. But it is complex by nature!
What It Means To Live In A Quantum Universe:
A Simple Look
In his article, “What Does It Mean To Live In A Quantum Universe?” physicist Ethan Siegel explores one of the most bizarre—and fundamental—aspects of our reality: quantum physics. It’s not just about mysterious science experiments or far-off space stuff. Quantum rules shape everything from the Sun to smartphones to the simple fact that we exist at all.
Siegel starts by explaining that everything is made up of tiny building blocks called particles. These particles make up matter and forces, but unlike what we’re used to in the “normal” world, we can’t pin down everything about them at once. For example, if you measure where a particle is, you can’t also know exactly how fast it’s going. This isn’t due to poor tools—it’s a built-in rule of nature called the uncertainty principle.
He illustrates this with a clever experiment: shoot tiny particles through a magnetic field and watch them split based on their spin. But if you measure their spin in a new direction afterward, it completely wipes out the first result. The particle “forgets” what it was before. That’s a peek into how strange and slippery the quantum world is.
Then comes the real twist: these particles aren’t always acting like tiny balls. When they’re just traveling through space without bumping into anything, they act more like waves—spreading out, overlapping, and even creating interference patterns. Only when they interact (or we measure them) do they behave like solid particles again. It’s as if they live a double life.
This dual nature plays out in the real world. Take the Sun, for instance. The energy inside it isn’t strong enough (in a classical sense) to force protons together to create nuclear fusion. But thanks to quantum tunneling—a trick of wave-like behavior—they still manage to fuse and keep the Sun burning. Without that, there’d be no sunlight and no life.
Quantum physics is also behind many everyday technologies: LED lights, solar panels, MRI machines, and even how plants turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis. All of them rely on these wave-particle quirks.
Siegel wraps it up by emphasizing this strange but simple idea: everything in the universe acts like a wave when moving freely and like a particle when it interacts. It’s weird, yes, but it’s also the reason anything works at all.
