Abstract
What are subatomic particles?
Subatomic particle
In the physical sciences, subatomic particles are particles smaller than atoms. (although some subatomic particles have mass greater than some atoms). There are two types of subatomic particles: elementary particles, which according to current theories are not made of other particles; and "composite" particles. Particle physics and nuclear physics study these particles and how they interact. In particle physics, the concept of a particle is one of several concepts inherited from classical physics. But it also reflects the modern understanding that at the quantum scale matter and energy behave very differently from what much of everyday experience would lead us to expect. The idea of a particle underwent serious rethinking in light of experiments that showed that light could behave like a stream of particles (called photons) as well as exhibit wave-like properties. This led to the new concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale "particles" behave like both particles and waves. Another new concept, the uncertainty principle, states that such their properties as position and momentum cannot be measured exactly. In more recent times, wave–particle duality has been shown to apply not only to photons but to increasingly massive particles. Interactions of particles in the framework of quantum field theory are understood as creation and annihilation of "quanta" of corresponding fundamental interactions. This blends particle physics with field theory.