I understand the math of the equation — mathematically speaking, the more certain you are of electron location, the less certain you are of velocity, and vice versa. But why? Do we know why this is a thing for electrons? Is here any hope of resolving this or does it appear to be an immutable characteristic of particle physics?
I’m tagging it Chemistry, because I’m primarily trying to understand it in terms of chemistry principles rather than physics principles because that’s how I need to apply it.
In: Physics
Heisenberg’s principle really isn’t all that complicated nor unusual. It is a very simple observation about the nature of time and waves.
Let’s take the example of the momentum/position pair. Momentum is the description of movement. Time is required to make sense out of any movement. The position is the opposite: when describing the position of a moving object you need an exact point in time.
Together they are contradictory – if there is no time, there is no movement. If there is a perfect position, there is no time.
Similarly for the energy/time pair. Energy is derived from the wavelength of the object. But without time the very idea of a wave simply doesn’t make any sense at all. Therefore, if you reduce time to zero for perfect precision, there are no waves, and without waves the idea of energy stops making sense.
It isn’t just quantum physics, it applies to normal life as well. For example, if you take a photo of an object at a very short exposure time you have no idea about its movement. It looks completely still. If you increase the exposure time you can see the object moving, but the photo is smeared so you can’t really say where the object was during the shot.
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