I’m not really into physics and what not, I just know the bare minimum. I’m a law student, so please believe I’m like 5 when it comes to this discipline of education.
Why is the Planck Length the “smallest thing in the world?” Or at least I hope I asked it right.
I’ve read that you cannot go smaller than this length, otherwise blackholes will occur and the world doesn’t make sense anymore.
Could you explain the main steps to understanding “length” and it’s relationship to energy before diving into the planks length? This concept is super interesting and I really want to understand it. From what I have read, understanding this concept is broken down like this:
(1) What is a wavelength actually?
(2) How are wavelengths and energy related?
(3) Why is the Plancks Length the smallest thing in the universe?
(4) What happens when something is smaller than a Planck Length?
Thanks!
In: Physics
Plank’s constant is a relation (aka. a ratio) or how certain one can be about the position of a thing and a destination (velocity) of a thing (*h-bar = <certainty of position> x <certainty of velocity>*). This put a limit on how certain we can be [about many things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units#Planck_units):
* length (Plank length)
* time (Plank time)
* mass (Plank mass)
* etc
Essentially Plank length is [super-mega-uber smaller than the smallest sub-atomic particle](https://www.htwins.net/scale2/) we’ve found so far. So this limit is really far from reach at this point. But on a theoretical level (math) this is the limit at which any object can move. If the universe is a digital “grid” the Plank Length smallest move anything can make.
How did we find this value? By developing a [hyper accurate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics) (like 19 significant figures!!!) model for the electron and determined this constant was connected to energy levels (orbits) of electrons in an atom. Then we started finding it everywhere. Kinda like how we (humans) determined the smallest electric charge was by experimenting with different [drops of oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment) and factored out the differences to find the fundamental electric charge.
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