Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave

mechanical model and matrix mechanics), including quantum field theory, is a fundamental
theory in physics. It describes advanced properties of nature on an atomic scale.[2]

Classical physics, the description of physics that existed before the theory of relativity and
quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, while
quantum mechanics explains the aspects of nature at small (atomic and subatomic) scales, for
which classical mechanics is insufficient.

Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation
valid at large (macroscopic) scale.[3] Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in that
energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities of a bound system are restricted to
discrete values (quantization), objects have characteristics of both particles and waves (wave-
particle duality), and there are limits to how accurately the value of a physical quantity can be
predicted prior to its measurement, given a complete set of initial conditions (the uncertainty
principle).[note 1]

Quantum mechanics arose gradually, from theories to explain observations which could not be
reconciled with classical physics, such as Max Planck's solution in 1900 to the black-body
radiation problem, and the correspondence between energy and frequency in Albert Einstein's
1905 paper which explained the photoelectric effect. Early quantum theory was profoundly re-
conceived in the mid-1920s by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and others.
The modern theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms. In
one of them, a mathematical function, the wave function, provides information about the
probability amplitude of energy, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle.