The mystery of quantum mechanics

Jim Al-Khalili is a quantum physicist and as a science communicator he knows the value of metaphors and imagery to bring theories and equations to life. Translating them into stories that capture the imagination, turning the inconceivable and the obscure into the familiar. However, in this third and final chapter of "Writing the Atom" on quantum mechanics this ambition becomes more difficult to achieve. The often quoted physicist Richard Feynman said, "if you think you understand quantum physics you don't understand quantum physics." Perhaps paradoxically, the one thing the physicists do agree on is that quantum mechanics is the most successful theory in all of science.

Quantum mechanics has given us modern electronics, from computers to mobile phones, as well as the laser, GPS, medical imaging devices, and the internet. And it has changed our perceptions of reality. One hundred years after the birth of quantum mechanics, a survey in the journal Nature found physicists still disagreeing ferociously about how to interpret the theory that so enraged Einstein. So how does one communicate this strange and counter intuitive science in a way that is not confusing when the scientists themselves can’t find a consensus.
Jim looks at how comedy, with characters like the ill-informed Philomena Cunk can inadvertently cut to the heart of sub atomic particles, or how Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen gives us a multilayered understanding of Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Geraldine Fitzgerald
Executive Producer Sasha Feachem
A BBC Studios Production