Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ?what is it?

Question

explain...

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty...

basically,   if you look at somethign moving,  it is at a different place when ur done looking at it then when you start looking at it.  

u kno,,, cause its moving.

more sicientific mumbojumbo to explain commen sence. that way some teacher can get paid 300k a year to teach it.

Answer 2

Here is a link that attempts to explain it.

Answer 3

the more precisely you measure the position of a particle, the less precisely you can measure its speed, and vice versa.

In other words, you can't measure both the speed and the position of the particle at a given point in time.

Also, the act of observation changes the property of the particle...kinda like the "would a tree falling in a forest make a sound if there is no one to hear it?"

Answer 4

The more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely the momentum of said particle can be known in this instant.

Answer 5

I gave thumbs up to ANYBODY WHO KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS !!! I admire your brains!!

Answer 6

It is impossible to know the precise location and exact velocity of subatomic particles at same time.  The act of observing alters the principle.  Cannot know where electron is at a given time.

An analogy is a person with poor eye sight who needs to wear glasses to see their weight on a scale.  Of course by putting on the glasses the weight is changed.

Answer 7

In quantum physics, the outcome of even an ideal measurement of a system is not deterministic, but instead is characterized by a probability distribution, and the larger the associated standard deviation is, the more "uncertain" we might say that that characteristic is for the system. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, or HUP, gives a lower bound on the product of the standard deviations of position and momentum for a system, implying that it is impossible to have a particle that has an arbitrarily well-defined position and momentum simultaneously. More precisely, the product of the standard deviations , where  is the reduced Planck constant. The principle generalizes to many other pairs of quantities besides position and momentum (for example, angular momentum about two different axes), and can be derived directly from the axioms of quantum mechanics.

Note that the uncertainties in question are characteristic of the mathematical quantities themselves. In any real-world measurement, there will be additional uncertainties created by the non-ideal and imperfect measurement process. The uncertainty principle holds true regardless of whether the measurements are ideal (sometimes called von Neumann measurements) or non-ideal (Landau measurements). Note also that the product of the uncertainties, of order 10−35 Joule-seconds, is so small that the uncertainty principle has negligible effect on objects of macroscopic scale, despite its importance for atoms and subatomic particles.

The uncertainty principle was an important step in the development of quantum mechanics when it was discovered by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. It is often confused with the observer effect.

Contents [hide]

1 Wave-particle duality

2 Uncertainty principle versus observer effect

3 Generalization, precise formulation, and Robertson-Schrödinger relation

3.1 Other uncertainty principles

3.2 Energy-time uncertainty principle

4 Derivation

5 History and interpretations

6 Popular culture

7 See also

8 Notes

9 References

10 External links

Answer 8

It means that Quantum Physics is really to weird to be analyzed, just looking at it changes the out come. Kinda like you have the winning lottery ticket as long as you never check it.  It is also the main cause of what I like to call Quantum Anxiety, that disturbed felling you get when you discover that know one can explain anything, like why we don't fall through the floor.  The world as we know  it is maybe just an illusion. That kind of stuff!

Answer 9

I'm not certain. Really.

Answer 10

Let me explain with a little joke:

Q. Why did Heisenberg have a difficult time driving a car?

A. Because every time he looked at the speedometer he got lost!