Questions about HUP

[mr friendly guy]

Two questions about Hisenberg's uncertainty principle

1. How do you explain it in Layman's terms?

From my understanding it just means that when you try and measure / observe / detect a particle, the energy from your measuring devices eg ?electron microscope causes the particle to move position. Hence you can't work out both the position and momentum of the particle at the same time.

2. What arguments have been used involving HUP to support spirituality and God?

Today was the first time I have seen it used, ie in a letter to the Editor. The writer was a known Christian retard and bigot and typically doesn't explain how HUP shows the existence of God and shows up the big bad Richard Dawkins, but just outright states it out. But I was wondering how do these arguments generally go? Presumably he got it from some website or book which mangles up HUP to its own ends.

[Samuel]

1. How do you explain it in Layman's terms?

It is what the Uncertainty Compensator deals with
Sorry- looking through Star Trek Cards.

It is the fact that since we use light, which is has a noticable mass next to electrons, our attempts to measure them can't be 100% accurate- the more we measure speed, the less we get direction and vice-versa.

Today was the first time I have seen it used, ie in a letter to the Editor. The writer was a known Christian retard and bigot and typically doesn't explain how HUP shows the existence of God and shows up the big bad Richard Dawkins, but just outright states it out. But I was wondering how do these arguments generally go? Presumably he got it from some website or book which mangles up HUP to its own ends.

As a guess it has to do with attacking determinism or certainty in knowledge. Anyone have the gory details?

[Kuroneko]

That sort of explanation is not a bad way to think about it, it is rather misleading without clarification. If you look at a particle (e.g., in a microscope), your resolving power is proportional to λ/sin α, where α is the opening angle of the reflected light (in a microscope, cf. aperture angle) and λ is the wavelength. Because light is made of photons, you can't simply decrease the amplitude--having small wavelength gives large momentum p ∝ 1/λ, so that the magnitude of the corresponding momentum component of the recoiled photon can vary from zero to p sin α. Thus: Δx ∝ λ/(sin α), Δp ∝ (sin α)/λ.

Note that the uncertainty relation doesn't follow just from the fact that photons of large momentum had kicked the particle around a bit, but rather that looking in the microscope also doesn't tell us the momentum of the recoil photon beyond a certain accuracy limited by its aperture. If we knew the recoil precisely, there'd be no problem no matter how large a kick the particle received, since momentum is conserved. Another downside of that explanation is that suggests that it is the fault of the observer, whereas in quantum mechanics, not only are there no definite states, but the trend is the opposite: observation makes observables more definite in the ordinary sense, not less.

To get slightly more detailed, you'd have to know that in quantum mechanics, physical states are described by wavefunctions; it's not important for your purposes to know how they work or what to do with them, other than they're some kind of waves and momentum is related to their wavelength. Imagine holding a rope tied to a post. Wiggle the other end up and down a bit. If you do it smoothly, there will be a sequence of crests and troughs traveling the length of the rope, and you can measure the distance between them--the wavelengths. In that case, however, it doesn't make much sense to ask where the wave is--it's everywhere on the rope. On the other hand, if you give the rope a sharp jerk instead, you can send a lone crest down the rope, which has a very well-defined position but indeterminate wavelength.

There is yet another explanation of the HUP is statistical, with Δx and Δp being standard deviations of positions and momentum, respectively, and still some more with increasing levels of mathematical abstraction.

As for the second question, the "What the Bleep?" duology is a particularly egregious example. I'm not sure about monotheism in particular, however.