Question

Newton’s laws of motion, such as trajectory and momentum, do not apply to subatomic particles as they do to larger objects such as baseballs. Research how subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, and electrons) behave and compare their behavior to the behavior of macroscopic particles that are governed by classical Newtonian physics.

·        How does the quantum, subatomic world differ from the world we can see and touch around us?

·        Specifically, do the same laws of classical physics for such things as momentum work in the subatomic world?

Answer 1

Newton's laws of motion is applicable to marcroscopic world . Newton's law of motion are applicable to particles which have well defend position and velocities and interacting with each other with well defined forces. Knowledge of position and velocity of particles at one point can be used to specified their position and velocity at any other point of time.

On the quantum level I.e subatomic level, the particle is so small that it is impossible to define it's position and velocity at same time. Each particle can infact be present as superposition of any states , which means there is whole range of the position and the whole range of velocity for the particle . This ability of the particles to be in several different states simultaneously result in the wave particle duality .

So they behave completely differently on quantum scale and there exist Heisenberg uncertainty principle which says that it is impossible for us to determine the position and velocity of a subatomic particle simultaneously with great accuracy .