This always confuses me and I’m not sure how it works. Please explain…
In: 252
An actual eli5 answer is…
Imagine a rollercoaster. You take a snapshot when its at the top of the hill.
You can now determine its location! But you don’t know its speed. Its just a snapshot, there isnt enough information to work out its speed.
To work out the rollercoasters speed we would have to record a video or take multiple photos. Then we could measure its speed by watching how far it moved in a period of time.
But now you don’t know its location! Because its moving!! If all you have is a snapshot to measure the rollercoaster you can only ever know its location OR speed not both, because a short snapshot tells you its location but not the speed. A long one tells you the speed but confuses the location.
Another example is a ripple in a pond. To measure the speed of the ripple you would measure how many peaks and throughs pass and in how much time. If you wanted to know the exact location of a peak you would have to monitor a small section of the ripple. You cannot measure both the whole over time and a short section at the same time. Its just physically impossible.
So it basically is for electrons. Because quantum physics are waves, we have this inherent problem.
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