- #1
bryan.picc
- 2
- 0
I am an entering college freshman and i have a few questions about the uncertainty principle and hope my misunderstanding can be cleared up. Below is my horrible understanding thus far since my technical abilities are much below necessary for understanding qm, although it is too interesting a problem for me to wait. Correct my misconceptions:
Due to the fact that subatomic scale is near the lower limit for size of particles in the universe, no particle X can reveal information about another particle Y without making a nonnegligible disturbance on the particle Y. Using a high energy photon to observe, an electron's momentum is obfuscated, and using a low energy photon, the momentum is known but not the position. This is quantified in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that neither can be determined with accuracy simultaneously. This (to me) says, the amount of information particle X can reveal about particle Y will always be probabilistic, therefore making the information impossible to deduct.
I don't understand how you get from this idea to the idea that an electron is inherently a smudge of positions. Obviously, I am wrong, but i don't understand where this notion of inherent non-determinism comes in from a problem that seems to be a problem of information one particle can reveal of another. I can't fully grasp this.
Due to the fact that subatomic scale is near the lower limit for size of particles in the universe, no particle X can reveal information about another particle Y without making a nonnegligible disturbance on the particle Y. Using a high energy photon to observe, an electron's momentum is obfuscated, and using a low energy photon, the momentum is known but not the position. This is quantified in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that neither can be determined with accuracy simultaneously. This (to me) says, the amount of information particle X can reveal about particle Y will always be probabilistic, therefore making the information impossible to deduct.
I don't understand how you get from this idea to the idea that an electron is inherently a smudge of positions. Obviously, I am wrong, but i don't understand where this notion of inherent non-determinism comes in from a problem that seems to be a problem of information one particle can reveal of another. I can't fully grasp this.