I finally understood why quantum particles are uncertain! (My mind is blown)

Comments · 2.6K

• MA

  @Mahesh_Shenoy · 2 years ago (edited) · pinned

  To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit <a href="https://brilliant.org/FloatHeadPhysics">https://brilliant.org/FloatHeadPhysics</a> . You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Also FAQ<br><br>1) What does it mean to add two waves together? <br>I could have been clearer here. The bottom line is since a wave packet can be mathematically constructed by adding lots of pure sine waves of different wavelengths (Fourier series), a wave packet contains multiple wavelengths. So, an electron can be thought of as a wave packet HAVING multiple wavelengths, and hence HAVING multiple momenta. <br><br>2) What&apos;s the intuition behind energy time uncertainty? <br>If you hear a tone for a small time, you are unsure about it&apos;s frequency. (You don&apos;t know if it&apos;s a pure sine wave or not). This means you are unsure about it&apos;s energy (E = hf). But since the time interval was very small, you are pretty accurate the absolute time value when you made the measurement. <br><br>On the other hand if you hear a tone for a long time, you become more sure about it&apos;s frequency. (You have much better idea about the repeating pattern). This means you are more sure about it&apos;s energy. But since the time interval was large, your accuracy about the absolute time when you made the measurement went down!

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• MA

  @marcievamp · 2 years ago

  I love how every time you make a video like this you talk as if you brought the scientists back from the dead and had lunch with them to make this video.

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• PE

  @peteryyz43 · 2 years ago

  Heisenberg gets pulled over by the cops, and they ask him &quot;Do you know how fast you were going?&quot;, Heisenberg says, &quot;No.. but I know exactly where I am&quot;.

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• FR

  @fredfurner · 2 years ago

  Now I understand. It&apos;s been 30 years of me trying to understand the uncertainty principle. I started as a 14-year-old and a high interest in physics, but no one was ever able to just break it down and explain it to me like this. Thank you, side quest complete.

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• SH

  @shyam6468 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Your channel should be watched by every high school student who has so many doubts in his mind because of the incomplete explanations of many topics in the NCERTs

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• MA

  @marvinmauldin4361 · 1 year ago

  Schrödinger&apos;s cat gets the headlines, but Heisenberg&apos;s dog isn&apos;t even in the lost and found section because it can&apos;t be caught.

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• BI

  @Bildgesmythe · 2 years ago

  The sign of a great genius is to be able to explain a complex subject to an idiot, &nbsp;like me, in a way I can understand! &nbsp;Thank you so much!

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• RV

  @rv6amark · 2 years ago

  &quot;...hold my cat!&quot; Cracked me up! 😅🤣😂🙃😊

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• JM

  @jmcsquared18 · 2 years ago

  Whenever I tell my students about quantum theory, I always try to highlight how necessary it is. The wave-particle duality is the entire reason we have atoms. If the electron is not a wave, but a particle, then all atomic orbitals decay in about 16 picoseconds.<br><br>You can use the uncertainty principle alone to back-of-the-envelope estimate the order of magnitude an electron&apos;s energy at various distances to a proton. Within nuclear scales, it&apos;d be enough to shoot it clean out of the proton&apos;s attractive potential. At the scale of the Bohr radius, it&apos;s on the order of a dozen or so electron volts, in agreement with the Schrödinger equation. The uncertainty principle actually implies a repulsive force between the proton and electron at sufficiently short distances, preventing orbital decay.<br><br>Even though I teach this, it never fails to blow my mind every time I think about it.

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• AP

  @apotterhead8747 · 1 month ago

  You&apos;re genuinely the best rabbit hole I fell into.

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• RA

  @rashbiplob · 1 year ago

  Don&apos;t try to watch this video at 2x or more . Excitement will eventually get an infinity value. There&apos;s no way except it.

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• VA

  @vanshmishra7119 · 2 years ago

  If only everyone had the chance to learn from the great minds like Feynman &amp; Einstein themselves.<br>Luckily we have YT and someone as passionate as you are.<br>Forever indebted.

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