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This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, according to UNESCO, marking 100 years since quantum mechanics was proposed. The theory hardly needed the extra publicity, though.

Look at any science magazine’s trending articles, and there’s a good chance quantum stories will be among the top rankings. Cute animals aside, quantum physics might be science fans’ favorite cover story. But why?

I’m a science journalist with a physics degree, and this question fascinates me. It’s not obvious why the public is so enraptured with quantum physics, a field that is notoriously difficult to explain and even more challenging to connect to everyday experience. Yet what I call the “quantum fixation” has prevailed almost since the theory originated.

I had the opportunity to research the perennial popularity of quantum physics for my master’s dissertation in science communication, and I chose to dive into the archives of Scientific American in search of an answer. As the U.S.’s oldest continually published magazine—180 years now—it is one of the few publications old enough to have witnessed the birth of the quantum age and has helped introduce it to the public.

Over the course of a few months, I searched the archives for articles with any mention of the word quantum in the past 100 years of print coverage. In analyzing who wrote these articles, what they chose to write about, and how they conveyed the often-confusing quantum world to general readers, I hoped to discover what the public found so compelling about quantum physics.

t turns out that what draws us to quantum physics are the same things its founders found repulsive about it.

Quantum Beginnings

You have to feel sorry for quantum mechanics sometimes. The scientists that founded it were among its harshest critics. In 1905, Albert Einstein first popularized the word quanta (derived from the Latin term for “how much”) to describe light as composed of discrete packets or bundles of energy known as photons.

At the beginning, quantum theory was just the simple idea that energy came in these discrete units. But even that notion was polarizing because experiments had already shown that light behaved, in many situations, like a wave.

Even then, established scientists struggled to communicate quantum ideas to a general audience. Quantum theory was a significant departure from simple, realist notions of science, where we have a straightforward correspondence between the words we use and the objects we’re referring to.

Newton’s first law of motion, for instance, describes how an object moves in a straight line unless an outside force acts upon it. This mass exists as a real entity with clearly defined and consistent properties we can measure.

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Richard Jones/Science Source

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