Subatomic particle

In the physical sciences, subatomic particles are particles much smaller than 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 when experiments 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 (also known as wavicles). Another new concept, the uncertainty principle, states that some of their properties taken together, such as their simultaneous 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 as well.