Oy. Quantum physics is complicated. I will edit this post over the next few minutes.
Quantum physics is current scientific description of how atomic and subatomic particles interact with one another. It is based on two fundamental concepts:
1) Energy and mass are not continuous - they occur in discrete amounts of a "smallest possible quantity" - this "smallest possible quantity" of something is called its quantum. For example, a photon is a quantum of light. You can think of pennies as the quantum of money, to have an analogy, because technically you can't have less than one cent of money, unless you're in Office Space.
2) There is no such thing as an absolute measurement - you can only measure something to within a certain degree of certainty, and most phenomena are explained not by quantities and coordinates ("this has this much mass, that much momentum", etc), but by a probability function, called a wavefunction. Observing something directly can give you a certain measurement for a given quantity, but at the expense of diminishing your certainty for some other, connected quantity. This is called the uncertainty principle. For example, if I measure an electron's position exactly, I have compromised my knowledge of its velocity - you can know where it is, or how fast it's going, but not both.
The current framework we have for describing the subatomic world is called the Standard Model - this describes all the fundamental particles and their interactions with one another within a quantum mechanical setting.
Axxle: Are you named after the wheeled vehicle part?
