I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Quantum mechanics become mind-bendingly complex very quickly. Way too quickly for me to fully understand. So I won’t pretend.
If you search Google for information, you will probably be overwhelmed by the confusion you find, all written by very clever people who are eagerly trying to get their head around that ‘mind-bendingly complex’ enigma.
For the sake of us simpler folk, let me summarise.
In a (crude and only vaguely accurate) nutshell, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in the universe is composed of just 17 fundamental particles and just 3 fundamental forces. (Or 4 if you include gravity, over which they are still debating… The string theory😱).
Even more fascinating is that virtually all matter, as in everything from the stars, to planets, humans, the air we breath and the water we drink, are composed of only three of those seventeen – up quarks, down quarks, and electrons.
Pretty amazing.
I’ve included a chart of those particles. It is known as the Standard Model. There are several versions, all heatedly competing for dominance, but the one I’ve included is as certain as I can find, and gratefully borrowed from Wikipedia.
“Quantum mechanics become mind-bendingly complex very quickly”
The Book of Quantism 