The greatest science knowledge
Which is the greatest?
In my humble opinion, I would say “Quantum mechanics” based on its wide applications that improve the well-being of humans, almost everything that touch our lives are associated with its scientific knowledge.
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties’ behaviours at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles-mainly protons and electrons.
The below picture is the structure of an atom with electrons and protons ect.. The electrons are attracted to the nucleus' protons due to opposite charges. All matters around us are made of different types of atoms with different number of protons/neutrons with electrons matching to the number of protons.
The behaviour of electrons is the most fascinating phenomena in the universe. The picture below is the different orientations of the electron clouds of different atoms. It is called cloud because the electron can be found in any of the location in the cloud at the same time with different probabilities according to Quantum mechanics. This property allows the electron clouds to be attracted to neighbouring atom's protons
This extraordinary property at sub-atomic level is yet to be applied to full extend by humans for example quantum computing with extraordinary speed and quantum communication which is hack proof.
The interactions of repelling and attractive forces of protons and electrons produce the different chemistry that can be applied to manufacture different materials of different functions for human applications. It is the interaction force with the neighbouring protons and electrons that produce the different chemistry with fascinating effects and applications.
When you look at humans’ Five major day-to-day activities “working”, “clothing”, “eating”, “living” and “travelling” are all associated with chemistry which based on interaction of electrons and protons of different types of atoms.
Working – The internet network and the phones/computers/Apps we are using by the minutes are all based on semiconductor applications that are associated with theories of quantum mechanics. Even when you are sitting on a chair or walking in an office building, electrons and protons are in action with repelling (electrons and electrons) and pulling forces (electrons and protons) of the concrete floors to prevent you falling through the floors.
Clothing – Colours of fabrics are made by chemical dyes/pigments. Fabrics of nylon and polyesters are produced by chemical processing via bonding of long chains of chemical compounds.
Eating – Food are cooked by burning of chemical gas and electric heating through high flow of electrons in metal wires.
Living – All metals and plastics of the electrical appliances in your home are made from chemical processing by manipulating the chemical bonding forces through heating to melt or cooling to solidify to different shapes.
Travelling – Cars /buses use petroleum products to generate energy to power the vehicles are made by crude oil refinery processing.
Implications
One might ponder that what this is all about? The implication is that our education focus is not sharp enough to prepare for the survival of the next generation in terms of employment nor to gain enough relevant educational knowledge to make a better living, since so many applications around us are based on quantum mechanics.
One might argue that this is only scientific knowledge, there are humanity subjects to be learned like economics, finance, laws, social science ect...However applications of these humanity subjects are all connected to human’s five major day-to-day activities, and the progress and well-being of these activities are not possible without applications of quantum mechanics illustrated above. Yet the quantum mechanics education we received in high schools has been little, and not enough to draw interests for further studies in universities.
And our future development will rely on quantum computing, quantum communications (hack proof of flow of information), even future space travel need energy of sub-atomic particles like nuclear fission/fusion.
