Heisenberg Effect?

[CarpeDeo]

Anybody know exactly what the Heisenberg Effect is and why it obtained that name? I looked for it on google but couldn't find much . . .i'm guessing it's 'cuz i'm spelling it wrong?

 

[Ionizer86]

Heisenburg Uncertainty (sp?): With an electron, you can either know where it is or how fast it is going; not both at once. So path of electron is unpredictable.

 

[911paramedic]

One of the basic ideas behind quantum theory/physics/mechanics is the H.U.C. It states, more or less, that the more you know about one aspect of a subatomic particle, the less you can know about the other. This means the more you know about the velocity of a particle, the less you can possible know about it's position. Remember, velocity is speed and direction. This means that you can know with 90% certainty the position of a electron or whatever, but then you can only know with 10% certainty it's velocity. Or vis versa, or 50-50, or not know anything at all (the easiest). With H.U.C., a Bose-Einstein Condensate can be formed. By supercooling atoms, they start to move very slowly. This means that you can be pretty sure that the particles have a velocity of near 0. Since you know this with a good deal of certainty, you can't know where it's position is very well, so the atoms become fuzzy and form one big atom called a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

Grabbed that from Google.

 

[911paramedic]

Schrodinger's Cat Paradox has always been one of my favorites.

 

[exp]

As others have said, the summary is: we can pinpoint position by using small wavelengths of light or we can pinpoint velocity by using larger wavelenghts of light, but we can never pinpoint both at the same time.

The reasoning behind this conclusion is as follows: if we want to see something we need to hit it with a photon, the basic unit of light, which has both particle and wave properties. It is impossible to see something by illuminating it with light with a larger wavelength than the object itself, so in order to accurately gauge position we need to lower the wavelength. However, by lowering wavelength we have increased the energy of our illuminating photon and when it hits the object a larger amount of that energy will be transfered to the target in the form of kinetic energy. In the case of small objects like electrons this added energy can significantly change their velocity. It is the tradeoff between measuring postion and measuring velocity.

 

[rahvin]

It's called that because that is the last name of the gentleman that came up with the idea. It's simple really, if you take a position measurement you must interact with the particle and in doing so you will effect the velocity and direction, and vis-versa when trying to take momentum measurements.

 

[tweakmm]

<< Schrodinger's Cat Paradox has always been one of my favorites. >>


I always loved the shcrodingers cat paradox too