In tough economic times, our exploratory science programs -- from space probes to the LHC -- are first to suffer budget cuts. Brian Cox explains how curiosity-driven science pays for itself, powering innovation and a profound...

How do magnets work? Why do they attract and repel at long distances? Is it magic? No... it's quantum mechanics, and a bit more, as we explain in this, the longest MinutePhysics video ever.

In this video Paul Andersen explains how the quantum mechanical model of the atom refined the shell model. Uncertainty of the position of the electron as well as spin forces chemists to create an improved model. In this model the...

The quantum physics of large things: Macro quantum effect. Why don’t tennis balls behave like quantum particles? What happens to a baseball in a double slit experiment? This experiment shows that atoms behave like...

How does a force between particles work? What causes an attraction or repulsion? Why does electromagnetism and gravity have infinite range, but the strong and weak force have a small range? Quantum chromodynamics...

Video on QM of Atoms which may clarify some concepts:    • The Quantum Mechanical model of an atom. W...  

Why do atoms combine to form molecules? The quantum mechanics of chemical bonds and chemistry....

The mass of the sun was well understood, and translates to about 10^57 atoms. This leads to a lifetime of the sun of about 20,000 years. But we know the sun is at least 4.5 billion years old. So where does the...

What do we think the universe is quantum? What if the universe was not quantized?

Classical mechanics was doing just fine after Isaac Newton reduced nearly all mechanical phenomena to a single powerful equation:...

Since electromagnetism is so strong, multiple protons in the nucleus of any atom like Helium should repel each other very strongly. So how do they stay glued together?...Because of a force that is even stronger...

What is the purpose of light? How does light work? Why does Light exist? There had been a controversy about whether light was particles or waves. Albert Einstein showed that light must come in discrete packets of...

Are Neutrinos useless? Would we exist without neutrinos? What are neutrinos? And what purpose do they serve? Where do Neutrinos come from?



They are the second most abundant particles after photons. They do...

Why does changing just one proton in the nucleus of an atom make a different element? How can a single proton make such a huge difference in an element’s properties?



The simple answer is: The number of...

Quantum Creation – what came before the big bang - the mechanism of a universe out of NO-thing - no matter, no space, and no time. Ancient Greek cosmologist Parmenides said “Nothing comes from nothing.” He was...

The scale of the universe is bigger than you can imagine. It is also smaller than you can imagine. The smallest lenth theorized to be possible, the Planck length is about 4 X 10^-35 meters. Just imagine...

What is reality? What is the standard model trying to tell us? Are we living in the 11 dimensions of string theory?



The holy grail of physics is a theory of everything. It may show the...

Ask 10 physicists what a particle is: you'll get 10 different answers. Quantum mechanics showed via the Schrodinger equation, that quantum objects are not particles but waves smeared out in space, until the moment...

What is the origin of mass in the universe? Symmetry breaking. Symmetries in quantum mechanics result in 3 of the fundamental forces of nature - electromagnetic, weak and strong forces. However, the breaking of...

What came before the Big Bang? what happened before the big bang? Since time is thought to have started at the big bang, asking what happened "before" is like asking what is North of the North pole? It may have no...

We take a deep dive to understand how chemistry works at a fundamental level. All chemistry is about electrons. They are the primary drivers responsible for an atom’s behavior in chemical reactions, or more precisely the way...

This video explains Quantum Mechanics intuitively. Classical mechanics failed to describe how an electron could orbit an atom. An accelerating charge always creates electromagnetic radiation. This means it...

What is the meaning of superposition and wave/particle duality? What do quantum particles really look like, when we are NOT looking?

All quantum particles exist in a state of superposition prior to any...

The term, “Mandela effect” was coined in 2009 by Fiona Broome, a “paranormal consultant.” She published a website where she described remembering Nelson Mandela, who had been an imprisoned leader of the...

This constant represented by the Greek letter alpha is just a dimensionless number, so no matter what units you use, it will always have the same value, about 1/137. If it was different by just 4%, life may not...

How does the Higgs give mass to particles? How do elementary particles gain mass? All mass is Energy. 99% of the mass of an atom is contained in the binding energy within the nucleus. But about 1% of your mass is...