[Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (inspired by the TV show Breaking Bad)]
This is not meth.
Even before I throw this ball, you can predict where it's going to land--right on the other side of the slit.
Ball after ball after ball, as long as I continue to throw straight, it will land
straight on the other side.
[Lands directly on other side if ball is thrown straight!]
But once you change from the macroscopic world to the microscopic world, things get strange.
Now, let's do the same experiment, but with an electron and slit the size of an atom. What happens now?
[Single slit experiment]
Woah! How is it that when the slit gets smaller the band gets wider?
Let's take a closer look.
Based off of our observations, the more accurately we try to pinpoint the
location of the electron (in this case the x direction)
the velocity , which previously only had a vertical component
somehow gains a horizontal component as it passes through the slit, making the
velocity less accurate. When we make the
slit wider which make the position less
accurate, the electron sees a decrease in
the X component of its velocity,
which make the velocity more accurate.
Yeah Mr. White, yeah science!
All objects have a wave particle duality, meaning that it acts both as a particle and a wave,
which is why it's impossible to pinpoint the exact location of a moving electron.
We can sum up our findings into a nice equation known
as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Heisenberg? No, not Walter White from
Breaking Bad,
the real Heisenberg! Werner Heisenberg!
In mathematical terms, the uncertainty of the position
times the uncertainty of the momentum (and momentum is just mass times velocity)
is always larger or equal to h, which is 
Planck's constant, over 4 pi
We can rearrange this equation to fit our findings. Since h over 4 pi is a constant,
the greater accuracy we know
about its position the less of the
accuracy would know about the electron's
momentum. And vice-versa.
Want to find the range of the electron velocity? If the
electron was confined to a space the size
of an atom, that means that the uncertainty in
the velocity is 2 x 10 ^5 m/s
or between -1 x 10^5 m/s to
1 x 10^5 m/s,
either going to the left or right side!
That is a big difference!
But wait a sec,
why don't we see the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
happen in our
daily lives, like this tennis ball? Let's
put it in the equation. If the tennis
ball weighs 60 grams and is confined to a
space of 7 centimeters that means that
the uncertainty of the ball's velocity is
1.25 x 10 - 32 m/s. That number is so
small it's essentially zero, which is why we don't see the uncertainty principle
happen in our daily lives.
I wonder how it would look like if it did. [puts on glasses]
