(Sorry if my wording is bad and sorry for no formatting I’m on mobile)
Why is it that two people can’t observe the same object and one measures momentum and the other the position of something.
Also, why can’t we use the momentum to calculate its future position, and then since we already have the momentum we can then have the position at the same time
(disclaimer: I know that the example I provided was wrong, I just want to know why it’s wrong)
In: Physics
To measure something you need to interact with it. In other words you affect the next state of a system by interacting with the current state.
So when it comes to say, measuring the position of a particle. You can’t do that without physically interacting with it, touching it in a sense. That means you’ll affect the momentum. Conversely, you can’t measure the momentum without affecting its position.
The uncertainty principle isn’t binary, meaning it’s that really you know either one thing or another. The name itself is a clue, it means the *more* certain you are of one property, the *less* certain you are of another.
The really cool thing about the uncertainty principle is that it pops up everywhere. For example, in information theory the more certain you are of how information behaves in terms of frequency (e.g. an audio signal, or speech) the *less* certain you are of how it behaves in time.
Latest Answers