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
One famous way people look at it is that electrons are so small that to observe them, you’d shine light(photons) on them and that would tell their location correctly but in the process have changed the momentum.
Mainly the problem is that observation, since it requires inteaction with what is being observed, is an inherently destructive process. It interferes with the state of the system. Thus there is a limit to how much of the system can be known without interfering with it.
It is almost a comment on our power to observe and know and what it really means to measure.
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