QED – a poem by Kate Rauner

Bosons carry force

Among the fermions

Flying back and forth –

Colliding with the masses.

All these interactions

Exchanging many photons

Exceed our calculations –

The math beyond our grasp.

A million million histories

Are not enough to tell

The pathways are a mystery –

Too many to envision.

When all the paths are added

Results become absurd

Infinity of masses –

Of minuses and pluses.

Infinities that run to right

Infinities to left

Yield answers that are finite –

Renormalized at last.

From these results we can’t predict

The math seems somewhat dubious

But once electrons are fixed –

The method is a triumph.

Weak nuclear combines

With electromagnetism

But strong nuclear we find

Evades with gravity.

Strong nuclear is parallel

A similar approach

But gravity is physics hell

Somewhere Einstein chuckles.

I’ve read many attempts to explain quantum physics without the mathematics. I’m currently reading The Grand Design by Hawkings and Mlodinow and I like it a lot. The tone is casual, the diagrams helpful, and the many cartoons are a lighthearted touch. If you’re a non-physicist, read this book, even if you’ve read other explanations. Remember Richard Feynman once wrote “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” But it has never failed a test, and if all that testing says it’s so, then it is so. The quantum world exists outside our intuitive, common-sense experience, so forget all that and follow the proof.