Imagine the particles as being so ridiculously tiny that it is impossible to precisely measure both their speed and their location. Because literally any action, even seeing (which depends on photons interacting with those particles), changes both parameters.
‘Measuring’ here is done by letting those particles interact with another; ie., you bump another particle into them. It’s currently the best shot we have. But, the very act of bumping this particle changes the particle.
The more precisely you want to know the location of the particle A, the higher the energy of the particle B(ump) has to be. But the higher the energy, the less certain you are of A’s speed.
View it like playing a game on your phone where the background is all grey. Touching the screen harshly and for shortly, reveals a pretty clear circle. But you don’t know which direction it moves in. If you touch the circle softly but longer, you see a diffuse cloud, but you see clearly how it moves.
If your touch was somewhere inbetween hard-short and soft-long, neither would be particularly clear nor vague. Touch hard and long, and you create new clouds so you don’t see the original one anymore. Touch soft and short, and you only see a diffuse cloud whose movement you don’t know.
Imagine the particles as being so ridiculously tiny that it is impossible to precisely measure both their speed and their location. Because literally any action, even seeing (which depends on photons interacting with those particles), changes both parameters.
‘Measuring’ here is done by letting those particles interact with another; ie., you bump another particle into them. It’s currently the best shot we have. But, the very act of bumping this particle changes the particle.
The more precisely you want to know the location of the particle A, the higher the energy of the particle B(ump) has to be. But the higher the energy, the less certain you are of A’s speed.
View it like playing a game on your phone where the background is all grey. Touching the screen harshly and for shortly, reveals a pretty clear circle. But you don’t know which direction it moves in. If you touch the circle softly but longer, you see a diffuse cloud, but you see clearly how it moves.
If your touch was somewhere inbetween hard-short and soft-long, neither would be particularly clear nor vague. Touch hard and long, and you create new clouds so you don’t see the original one anymore. Touch soft and short, and you only see a diffuse cloud whose movement you don’t know.