{"id":6486,"date":"2010-09-08T03:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=6486"},"modified":"2010-09-08T03:00:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T08:00:48","slug":"uncertainty-squared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/6486","title":{"rendered":"Uncertainty Squared"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/09\/what_uncertainty_means_to_me--.php\">Uncertain Principles:  What Uncertainty Means to Me&#8211; And You, and the Universe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the most (if not <em>the<\/em> most) commonly maltreated physics concepts in journalism is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[T]he origin of uncertainty really does spring from the idea of particle-wave duality rather than any ideas related to the act of measurement. It comes from the fact that, fundamentally, the position of a quantum object, like an electron or a photon, is a particle-like characteristic, while its momentum is associated with the wave nature of the object. Mathematically, the momentum of a quantum object is given by Planck&#8217;s constant divided by its wavelength (or, equivalently, the wavelength associated with a quantum object is determined by Planck&#8217;s constant divided by its momentum).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps we can start up the group <strong>P<\/strong>hysicists <strong>F<\/strong>or <strong>T<\/strong>he <strong>P<\/strong>roper <strong>T<\/strong>reatment of the <strong>H<\/strong>eisenberg <strong>U<\/strong>ncertainty <strong>P<\/strong>rinciple, or PFTPTHUP (which would sound like blowing a raspberry, or Bill the Cat hacking up a furball, either of which could be one&#8217;s reaction to seeing the HUP abused in the media)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uncertain Principles: What Uncertainty Means to Me&#8211; And You, and the Universe One of the most (if not the most) commonly maltreated physics concepts in journalism is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. [T]he origin of uncertainty really does spring from the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/6486\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}