HEISENBERG’S UNCERTAINITY PRINCIPLE

Here ,I only explain the logical basis behind the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle :
It is a very famous principle that follows from the De Broglie Hypothesis.
De Broglie suggested a brilliant but 'difficult to digest' idea in 1924. He proposed that all moving
bodies have a wave nature ..i.e, it has properties of both particles and waves . It has a dual nature.
Moreover he suggested that it is a completely general one that applies to all.
However, for massive bodies ,say a moving bus/car or any daily life stuff we see with our naked eyes,
it can be easily showed that the wave nature is super negligible , therefore we don't interpret them
as a wave. But for the particles at subatomic level , like electrons, the wave nature cannot be
underestimated at all .Since a subatomic particle has wave nature, it should have a wavelength .It
was named De Broglie wavelength , given by the formula :
wavelength=(h/momentum)
where, h=Planck's Constant.
Note:It is clear from this formula,that the momentum can be calculated if the wavelength is
known.i.e,
momentum=(h/wavelength) .
Remember this ,we will need this a few seconds later.
Ofcourse this was a very unconventional idea.
Yet his theory could explain otherwise mysterious data like :
Why does the electron revolve around the nucleus only in orbits in which it's angular momentum is
integral multiple of h/2π,i.e, it explained why the Bohr quantisation of angular momentum worked.
But it had consequences. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is one of them.
This is how:
It is difficult to digest that a particle behaves as a wave because of obvious reasons. I mean the
particle is localized in space while wave is spread over a region of space.
Now we move on to understand the logical basis for the uncertainty principle. If the moving object is
a particle, it has a position at certain instant of time. So it does not have a wavelength (because a
particle does not have a wavelength,.. It is localized in space). Remember the De Broglie Formula I
mentioned above?..
momentum=(h/wavelength).. The momentum can't be measured if wavelength is not known. So in
this case , the position can be known but not the momentum.
Now let's go to analyse the wave nature . If the moving object behaves like a wave instead , it has a
wavelength and therefore you can measure it's momentum from the above formula but it has no
position (because a wave has no position, it is spread over space).So this time the momentum can be
measured but not the position.
Now let me say you that a quantum system has a strange feature that when you measure it , you
disturb it and your measurement affects the system. But before measurement it exists as a
superposition of it's various states.
So before you measure, the moving object has a dual nature . But when you try to measure it's
precise position, you force it to show it's particle nature (only a particle/body has a precise position)
and that renders it impossible to measure it's wavelength and therefore it's momentum can't be
measured. When you try to measure it's momentum , you force it to show it's wave nature (because
momentum is associated with the De Broglie wavelength) and therefore it's position can not be
measured.
This is what Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says us,i.e, one can not measure both position and
momentum of a particle simultaneously and precisely with unlimited accuracy. To measure one of
the above quantity precisely ,one has to compromise with the accuracy of the other quantity .
Edit : I have tried to answer your question in simple words,without using a mathematical proof
taught in a quantum mechanics course ,using the non-commutativity of position and momentum
operators, so that a normal man can understand the logic behind this . If you want a mathematical
proof it can be found is most standard quantum mechanics text book. I hope it helps. :)

Edit 2: For those who might get the impression that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is about our
limitation or inability to precisely measure the position and momentum, I want to stress on the fact
that it's not. Infact it's a property of the quantum system that it fluctuates. I don't want to go deep
into this in this context since it's not the question at hand, and there's a lot in it to say if I get started,
but I do encourage you to go ahead and do some research about experiment conducted by Yuji
Hasegawa, a physicist at Vienna University of Technology, Austria to learn the latest answer to the
question whether uncertainty principle is a measurement problem or a property of the quantum
system. Infact I want to note one more important thing that the mathematical form of uncertainty
principle we use in our university papers and books is not even Heisenberg's. It was given by another
guy named Kennard, so we are using Kennard's uncertainty principle. And Heisenberg did give his
own uncertainty principle in a slightly different mathematical form and he himself considered it to
be measurement problem but today we know that he was not correct about it.

Easiest, for me, is to use the theorem from advanced calculus, derived by Fourier about 100 years
before Heisenberg did his work. He showed that a superposition of waves could not have both a
small size and also a small number of frequencies. Specifically, he showed that

ΔkΔx≥1/2
In this equation, k is the "wavenumber", or the "spatial frequency", equal to 2π/wavelength. I
emphasize that this equation is only based on the mathematics of Fourier transforms. It has nothing
to do with quantum mechanics.

Now recognize that for the wave function, the momentum of the particle is given by p = (h/2π)k. So
take the Fourier equation, multiply both sides by (h/2π), and you get

ΔpΔx≥h/4π
Since the wave function is a wave, this equation is an immediate consequence. This is Heisenberg's
uncertainty relationship.

Because it is quantum physics, we no longer interpret Δp as a range of spatial frequencies, but as an

uncertainty. That's because the standard ("Copenhagen") interpretation of quantum mechanics says
that a measurement will detect only one of the many waves that compose the pulse.
This derivation is not an approximation or a heuristic argument, but a correct derivation, and as a
result it gives the exact Heisenberg relationship. Of course, in order to understand it, you have to
understand the properties of waves, and that was worked out by Fourier.

There are other "heuristic" ways to see the relationship. Some of these refer to the fact that
measurement "must disturb" the particle. In fact, the only assumption that you need to make in
modern quantum physics is that a measurement causes the wave function to "collapse", meaning
that only one of its many components will be detected.
The uncertainty principle [HUP] is not a fundamental property of nature at all. In fact, it's a
consequence of something deeper. It's also got nothing to do with measuring or quantum. It's got
something to do with waves, any waves for that matter.

So first, what is the uncertainty principle. In simple terms, if you try to figure out exactly where a
particle is, you will see that the particle has undefined speed/direction. [Notice I am saying it has, not
that it cannot be measured, this is super important].

Similarly, if you try to figure out exactly the speed/direction of a particle's motion, you will find that it
exists in multiple locations at the same time.

Now the above statements might sound weird. Because it's hinting that somehow particles can be at
multiple locations at the same time, or have multiple speeds at the same time isn't it? Guess what,
as weird as this sounds it's absolutely true.

Unlike what our day to day objects (big things) behave, quantum particles don't have a defined
location or speed/direction. You might ask, why this is true? But then I can ask why not? That's
fundamentally how things behave. Then you may ask a better question, why most big things don't
behave this way?  Then that's a good question.

The answer is, they still do behave this way. It's just that the range of locations and speeds that
these tiny particles posses are way, way smaller than the size of our big things. Imagine an ant
teleporting and dancing all over the earth, the ants' location is totally undefined isn't it, but if you
zoom out and see from the sun's point of view, the whole earth looks like a dot, and we could say
that this ant is having a definite location. But remember the quantum particles are not really
teleporting or dancing, that was just an example to explain why we miss these undefined
location/speed thingy for big things.

In summary, when you look at the quantum world, there are two levels of weirdness. Level 1 -
Accepting that quantum particles have undefined location or speed at any given moment. Level 2 -
When you try to narrow down one, the other ends up becoming super undefined [HUP].

Now let's convince ourselves that HUP has really nothing to do with the quantum world. It's got
something to do with waves.

Consider the simplest wave ever. A sine wave.

Imagine that this is a wave on a surface of water. It has a single frequency of say 10 Hz. This means,
that any point, if you wait for 1 second, 10 waves will pass by you. You can also see that this wave
has no beginning and no ending, it’s infinitely big.
Now get this, this wave has 1 and only 1 single frequency [and just one particular speed say 10
km/hr to the right], but it’s location is everywhere. This wave is everywhere isn’t it?

So we have a system, whose speed we know precisely but it’s location is everywhere in the universe.
Now let’s say we want to confine it’s location, how would we do that? Say we wanted that wave
NOT to exist at certain locations, what can we do?
Well we can use the concept of ‘destructive interference’. Let’s take an example.

Suppose we generate another such wave, but this time it has a slightly higher frequency say 11 Hz
and moving to the right at say 11 km/hr. It would look like this

The lower one is of 11 Hz. You can see this lower is a little tightly packed compared to the one
above.
Now notice that there are places where the two waves line up exactly peaks on peak valleys on
valleys [like at the beginning of the wave], and at certain places they line up opposite peaks on
valleys [like when you go to the 5th peak of the first wave].
So imagine these waves were to be mixed together, what would happen? Well, where the waves line
up, they would create bigger wave, and where they line up ‘opposite’ they would destroy each
other. So together it would look like this
The combination of the two waves is shown by the third one, the bottom most one.
Now let’s just concentrate on this wave

Can you see, that at certain locations the wave doesn’t exist anymore. So in sense we have
‘decreased it’s uncertainty in location’, but now what’s the speed of this wave now? Is it 10 km/hr?
is 11 km/hr? It has both isn’t it [because it’s made of these two travelling waves]. It’s not that we
don’t know whether it’s 10 or 11, we know it’s BOTH!.
So to summarise, when we narrowed down on it’s location (just a little bit) it’s speed became a little
uncertain (10 and 11)

This is the uncertainty principle. Now let’s get rid of all the misconceptions.
Notice this has nothing to do with measuring things.
It has nothing to do with information.
It’s just the way how waves work.

Just for the sake of completeness, we can keep going further, let’s keep adding more and more
waves and see how the system evolves.
After adding three waves,

The quantum particles are pretty much like these waves. [I say pretty much because they are super
weird to imagine, but mathematically almost identical to these water waves].
So when we are detecting an electron, say, we are making it’s location super precise. When that
happens, we can imagine the electron as a super position of almost infinite waves each one have it’s
own speed. As a result, it’s speed gets extremely uncertain, satisfying the HUP.
When we try to figure out it’s speed, what we really do is we select one of these interfering waves,
and get rid of all the others, when that happens, the electron has just one single speed, but now it’s
position ends getting super spread out [because we have stripped away all the waves that would
cause destruction at many locations]

Take a camera outside and take a photograph of a moving car.. If you opt for a fast shutter speed
you get no sense of movement but the position of the car, relative to the background, is fixed. If you
go for a slower shutter speed the photo gives an impression of speed, because the car is blurred, but
no precise position of the car with regard to the background.

So you can imagine drawing up an equation which combines velocity and position in such a way that
if you take a photograph again you will know how much blur you want and how much accurate
position information.. You can't have both.