FREE ESSAY ON WHY USE QUANTUM MECHANICS?

WHY USE QUANTUM MECHANICS?

Quantum Mechanics is the science of subatomic particles and their behavior patterns that
are observed in nature. As the foundation of scientific knowledge approached the start of
the twentieth century, problems began to arise over the fact that classic physical ideas
were not capable of explaining the observed behavior of subatomic particles. In 1913, the
Danish physicist Neils Bohr, proposed a successful quantum model of the atom that began
the process of a more defined understanding of its subatomic particles. It was accepted
in the early part of the twentieth century that light traveled as both waves and
particles. The reason light appears to act as a wave and particle is because we are
noticing the accumulation of many light particles distributed over the probabilities of
where each particle could be. In 1923, Louis De Broglie hypothesized that subatomic
particles exhibit wavelike and particle properties for the same reason. The success of
these theories inspired physicists to developed a way to describe the behavior of
subatomic phenomena in terms of both waves and particles by means of mathematics. 
Newton's laws, the basis of classic physical ideas, help obtain precise information about
the location of an object at any future time. Classical physics assumes all collisions
and locations of particles can be measured at once. The dual wave-particle nature of
electrons flew in the face of such beliefs. In a changing environment, as is the nature
of the electron, classical physical attributes of position and momentum are fleeting
phenomena. No atomic particle can have both of these properties at the same time. An
electron cannot be observed without changing its state. The simultaneous measurement of
two conjugate variables such as the momentum and position or the energy and time for a
moving particle entails a limitation on the precision of each measurement. This
observance is what Werner Heisenberg refereed to as the principle of uncertainty, which
commonly became known as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. We have the illusion that
position and momentum can co-exist in large objects whose inherent action is huge
compared to subatomic particles. 
Heisenberg realized that the uncertainty relations had profound implications. Heisenberg
set himself to the task of finding the new quantum mechanics to explain what his theories
observed. He relied on what can be observed, namely the light emitted and absorbed by the
atoms. By July 1925, Heisenberg wrote his answer in a paper. The basic idea of
Heisenberg's paper was to get rid of the orbits in atoms and to arrive at new mechanical
equations. Heisenberg's approached focused mainly on the particle nature of electrons.
The mathematics Heisenberg used were tables commonly used for multiplication of arrays of
numbers-mathematical objects known as matrices. Using the mathematics of matrices,
scientists had at last a new mechanics for calculating the quantum behavior of particles.
Heisenberg, and others showed that the new quantum mechanics could account for many of
the properties of atoms and atomic events.
Most physicists were slow to accept matrix mechanics because of its abstract nature.
Erwin Schrodinger came up with a mathematical equation which nicely described the wave
nature of electrons. Scientists gladly welcomed Schrodinger's alternative wave mechanics
when it appeared in early 1926 since it entailed more familiar concepts and equations.
This led to much easier calculations and more familiar visualizations of atomic events
than did Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. Schrodinger's equation provides us with
information about the probability of finding the particle in a location at some future
time. We can state that the probability of finding the object at each point is high or
low, but we can never say with certainty where the object will be at a future time. 
Bohr drew a relation between uncertainty, and the statistical interpretation of
Schrodinger's wave function, and published a proof that matrix and wave mechanics gave
equivalent results-mathematically they were the same theory. Together, the two theories
formed a logical interpretation of the physical meaning of quantum mechanics that became
known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. 
Scientists, nurtured by the Copenhagen doctrine and the new quantum mechanics, formed a
new and dominant generation of physicists. With the help of modern quantum physics we can
speak of more attributes, such as mass, charge, wave functions, and the uncertainty
principle in describing electron behavior. But, as Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation goes
on to suggest, our quantum theories are simply man made generalizations formulated to
account for our observations. Quantum mechanics fails to provide deterministic,
single-valued solutions to any problem. The true, accurate prediction of subatomic
particle behavior is still left for discovery.