What is the Uncertainty Principle?

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle - in a nutshell!
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Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute!

In this episode, we talk about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and how it's not really that weird - it's just a property of waves!

Music by Nathaniel Schroeder
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• Category

  Science & Technology

[WolfSeife]

Not confused.

Uncertain :P

[mrpengywinz123]

i understand it....

[samuel5487]

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[Ben Maunder]

As a result- the wavepulse that he's drawn has a particular uncertainty in space AND a particular uncertainty in frequency. So- you can't know both frequency and position exactly because as you reduce the uncertainty in one- the uncertainty in the other becomes greater! (if you want to know more just look up Fourier Transforms- that's the maths behind it)

[Ben Maunder]

-so it maybe isn't perfectly explained- you're right, the wavepulse has a frequency- well- it actually has a range of them. In order to make a wavepulse you have to add together a number of waves with different frequencies. A perfect pulse (just a single spike) can be considered to be made up of an equal amount of waves at every single frequency- that is- it's frequency is completely uncertain. But the wavepulse he's drawn is somewhere in between a perfect pulse and a perfect wave.

[Ben Maunder]

..and this is true classically too, it's not even a quantum thing: if you calculate the kinetic energy of a wave it turns out to be proportional to the frequency squared. And momentum is proportional to the square root of the kinetic energy. So momentum is directly proportional to frequency. :)

[Ben Maunder]

The momentum of a wave is actually related to it's frequency: It's actually proportional to 1/wavelength. Look up De Broglie wavelength :)

[brokenbeforetime]

I use to think I was smart...Then I started watching MinutePhysics.

[Eman7OO2]

Polo!



[Gal Beeri]

should be changed to "heisenberg principle