That thing is quantum mechanics, a theory that applies to all forms of matter and energy (as far as we can tell). Heisenberg’s principle is not like that – it’s actually a consequence of something more fundamental. A “ principle”, in science as in everyday life, is a fundamental simple idea from which all sorts of other things can be derived, such as the principle of freedom, or the principle of fairness. Is it a Principle?īefore getting into the details, one thing to get clear is that Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” is not really a principle at all. In the second, there is the HUP that says if you accurately measure the position you will disturb its speed, making it more uncertain, and vice versa. In the first case, there is the HUP that says it is not possible to simultaneously measure position and speed with perfect accuracy. Or I first measure the position, then the speed.” In fact, neither of these options will work, and what rules them out is other forms of the HUP itself. If I want to know both I just measure them simultaneously. You might be jumping up and down at this point and saying “That’s ridiculous. But you will never be able to arrange things so that you can be certain of both its position and its speed. A different experiment would let you predict its speed. It is possible to arrange an experiment so you can predict the position of a particle. The simplest example of the HUP is the following: You can never be certain of both the position and the speed of a microscopic particle. The HUP killed that dream in a very interesting way. Of course, life would be pretty boring if we could always predict what was going to happen next, but for many centuries scientists dreamt they would be able to do this.
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