The underlying cause of the heisenberg uncertainty theory

Question

I don't fully understand the heisenberg uncertainty theory. Everything I don't know has transformed the theory into something i just don't understand one hundred percent. So my question is, Is there a theory that sets out to explain the Heisenberg uncertainty theory with clarity in a way that makes sense to a layman?

Answer 1

Is there a theory that sets out to explain the Heisenberg uncertainty theory in a way that makes sense?

To start with, the Heisenberg Uncertainty is a Principle , (HUP), not a theory. It was found while studying experimental data.

Principles, laws, postulates,... are statements assumed as extra axioms, in the theoretical models used in physics, so that from the mathematical models used to describe data, those solutions are picked up that fit data and are predictive.

Here is a history of how the HUP was defined to fit the quantum models of the time.

In this wiki article various mathematical ways are described of how the HUP is related to the theories, i.e. the simple HUP can be derived from the present mathematical physics theories, which should not be surprising as it was used in developing them. There is a lot of sense in the mathematics of it.

Answer 2

Here is a simple way to think about this.

For very, very small particles, it is possible for them to behave as if they were waves. Imagine a wave spreading out on the surface of a body of water: as it spreads, it is nonlocalized and it becomes hard if not impossible to say exactly where the wave is at any instant in time. You can therefore account for the indeterminacy in a quantum particle's position as a consequence of its tendency to get its position smeared out a little because it happens to be acting like a wave, an explanation which is due to the physicist Richard Feynman. .