Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Why, exactly, can you not know both the velocity and position of a particle?

Question

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Why, exactly, can you not know both the velocity and position of a particle?

In: 146

Answer 1

In order to see something, light has to hit the object and then travel to your eye.

If a particle is small enough, the simple act of being hit by a single photon of light changes the particle’s position. By the time that same photon reaches your eyeball carrying the information of where the particle was, it has moved elsewhere. So we’re only able to see where a particle WAS, but it’s impossible to know exactly where the particle is NOW, without looking again – ie, without pinging it with more photons and repeating the same problem.

On the quantum level, the simple act of observing particles changes their behavior.