Glad to see you are interested in quantum mechanics, Marsha. It is one route into the mystical. To answer your question, the uncertainty principle, which is what you are asking about, arises out of the dual nature of matter. It is both a wave and a particle. If you treat it like a particle (position) you miss out on the momentum (wave), and visa versa.
If you take a snapshot of a runner, you have no idea how fast he is going from the picture. If you are only measuring his speed with a radar, you have no way of knowing where he is from the reading on the radar. It's something like that, although it can be made much more complicated. This and other quantum mechanical principles then go on to prove that we create what we measure. I have a feeling that all of this arrises out of a model in physics that is far from perfect. But where this model leads us philosophically is fascinating indeed! Cheers, Willblake2 On Jul 30, 2009, at 3:27:27 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: From: MarshaV <[email protected]> Subject: [MD] principle of complimentarity Date: July 30, 2009 3:27:27 AM PDT To: [email protected] Greetings, Why is it that if we perform an experiment to determine a quantum particle's position, it excludes knowing only the particle's momentum and not everything else? Marsha _____________ "He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has." (Friedrich von Schiller) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
