August 21, 2020 • 48 mins
Who was Heisenberg? What was his contribution to quantum mechanics? What is the uncertainty principle?
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech, and it is time
for a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode is titled
Say My Name. It published originally on September two, thousand thirteen.
(00:30):
I'm guessing this one's about Heisenberg. That's right. I'm going
purely by the title here. I have not gone back
to listen to this episode. I'm going to experience this
again with you guys. Obviously not for the first time.
I was there in but dude, I can't remember last Tuesday.
So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode.
(00:50):
Werner Heisenberg. Right, I'm just not sure about this topic. Heisenberg, Right, okay,
wall I think I have some notes on him too,
are you? This is he was born on December five,
nineteen o one. Yes, that one, the physicist. Yes, the
famous theoretical physicist. All right, well, all right, maybe I
won't get a geek out about breaking bad, but that's fine.
(01:12):
We can talk about Vernon Heisenberg. I like that your
German pronunciation is better than the lady with the last
name vocal bomb. That's pretty that's pretty great. Um So
born on December five, nineteen o one, in Verzberg. Uh
and yeah, Heisenberg has played an incredibly important role in
(01:32):
the establishment that that's the foundations of what is quantum mechanics. Right.
If you've heard of something something called the uncertainty principle,
that is a k A. Heisenberg's u certain new principle,
that that is, he is the operative Heisenberg. In this
we will we will explain what that uncertainty principle is
in certain terms, but that will be towards the second
(01:55):
half of the podcast. First we wanted to kind of
talk about who he was, sort of his background. His
father was an expert in Middle and modern Greek languages.
That's a Dr. August Heisenberg. His mother was any wink Lin.
Winklin wink Lin was w there's no W sound in German.
(02:15):
It's um, yeah, so vs or fs and and w
s or vs. That's easy to remember, simple, all right, Yeah,
so yeah, he he um. It's funny because I understand
that his his own background in Greek. His father was
an expert in Greek. His own background in Greek meant
that when they got to the point where physicists were
(02:36):
starting to name theoretical and he would correct people's use
of Greek, saying things like, you cannot spell it this
way because that's not how it would be actually spelled
if such a thing existed in the Greek language. So
so he was, um, you know, helping us stay on
the rails as far as the use of Greek, right
(02:56):
while he was growing up. When he was twelve, that
is when Neil's Bore presents did his general theory of
of quantum existence. Yes, so Bore would be incredibly important
during Heisenberg's education. But Niels Bore also known for making
the Bore model of the atom. So that was the
model the atom that suggested that you had a central
(03:17):
nucleus and then electrons that were orbiting nucleus. Yeah, so
that's you know, anyone who's taken any any class in
chemistry or physics has seen the Boor model. It's still
one of those things that um usually is. It's part
of the history of the development of particle physics and
quantum mechanics. Right. We we know now that it's a
(03:39):
little bit um simplified Yeah. In fact, Heisenberg would go
on to be the one who right exactly right, Uh,
he was. While he was in high school, there was
a major event that played out across the entire world
and particularly in Europe. World War One. Yeah, World War
One happened between nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighteen. So of
(04:00):
Heisenberg's academic contemporaries, or not even contemporaries, some of his
mentors had actually served in World War One, various officers
in the military, right right. Um, Heisenberg himself had to
leave school, leave high school to go help harvest crops
in Bavaria at the time. And um, by by the
time he got back after the war, he was deeply
(04:21):
involved in youth groups like the New Boy Scouts. That
we're trying to rebuild the science and artistic culture in Germany. Right,
So keep in mind, like at this time in Germany,
things are really tumultuous. I mean, World War One was
already one of those events that that played upon certain
sentiments in Germany, and after the war was concluded, that
(04:46):
got even more messy because you had the rest of
the world, uh, you know, trying to deal with this
situation and make sure that it could not happen again.
I mean, this was one of those wars that no
one really expected whatever happened. But as the idea was
that everyone would be building up their armies to a
point that anyone would be crazy to attack anyone else.
And as it turns out, humans are crazy, y'all. So um, yeah,
(05:09):
we it was. It was one of those things where
where as in an attempt to prevent this from happening again,
there were a lot of reparations demanded against Germany. This
in turn ended up fueling a lot of resentment in
Germany and would eventually give the Nazi movement sort of
the kind of foothold. Yeah exactly, It gave them that
(05:30):
that that place to build some support, because you had
all these Germans who felt that that their lives had
been ruined as a result of the actions that followed
World War One. Now that plays a big role in
Heisenberg's life because this is also a time when physicists
are making incredible discoveries. We are learning more about the
(05:54):
quantum world, that that atomic scale world than ever before.
The instruments that were being made were becoming precise enough
for us to look at things on a level that
we never could have seen before. So there is a
figurative explosion in physics at this time and a lot
of and sometimes literal explosions. But a lot of the
(06:16):
physicists that were active at this time, particularly in Germany,
were of Jewish descent. Now, of course that would cause
play another important role once we talk about the rise
of the Nazi movement and the entry into World War two.
Obviously that's going to to really shake things up. But
before we get to that point, we talk more a
(06:37):
little about about Heisenberg's educational background. Once World War One
had concluded, he attended the Maximilian School at Munich and
then eventually the University of Munich. He originally went to
study math, but according to reports, a professor wouldn't let
him into an advanced seminar, and that's when he switched
to physics. And just imagine what the world would be
(06:59):
like without that, I mean, quantum physics, for example, might
have a very different approach, particularly when you start talking
about people like Schrodinger, and we will and maybe we'll
even mention his cat so uh. At the university, he
studied physics with professors like Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, who
was a theoretical physicist. Uh he was a physicist who
(07:23):
would stay on teaching even during World War Two, so
he stayed in Germany and continued to teach. He did
get a little upset that the well more than a
little upset that his departments were being completely yet purged
of anyone who had any sort of Jewish background, whether
(07:43):
they self identified as Jewish or if they had maybe
an ancestor the three generations back who was Jewish. Sure. Also,
according to some reports, the Nazis considered the theoretical physics
as a field to be Jewish. Yes, yes, because there
were there were so many Jewish inkers who were the
leaders of theoretical physics that the Nazis looked down upon
(08:06):
the entire discipline as being something that was impure and
should be completely purged. And in fact, instead they wanted
to have Deutsche physique that's German physics as a study
as opposed to theoretical physics, so that would also disrupt
the advances that could have happened during that time. Another
professor was Wilhelm Karl Ferner Otto Fritz Franvien, you're just
(08:30):
enjoying saying these names, aren't you? Will Helm Vien is
usually how we we say that, but yes, you're The
answer to that question is yes, I love. I love
saying German names. Uh. He was a physicist and he
focused on black body radiation and electromagnetics magnetism rather and
he passed away in n So he died before World
War two began. He died before the Nazis had really
(08:52):
taken control of Germany. Um there was Alfred Pringsheim who
was a professor of mathematics and had Jewish roots. During
the Nazi regime, he would see his entire fortune taken
from him. Everything he had inherited a huge fortune and
everything he owned was taken by the Nazis. He was
eventually forced to change his name to Alfred Israel Prinsheim
(09:15):
because of his Jewish ancestry. One wonderfully racists, you know,
the Nazis were not known for being subtle with the
way that they treated any one of Jewish heritage. And
then a fourth professor was Arthur Rosenthal, who had a
focus on geometry as well as dynamical systems, also had
Jewish roots. He would be forced from his position in
(09:37):
nineteen thirty six by the Nazis and would eventually immigrate
to the United States and nineteen nine and taught at
the University of Michigan, which has come up a lot
in our conversations recently because that's where Sid went to.
But he taught at the University of Michigan, then eventually
taught at the University of New Mexico and then later
at Purdue University. So these were the four professors who
(09:58):
really kind of sparked Heisenberg's fascination with physics and mathematics,
and this is founding in in those subjects exactly, so Somerfeld, Veen, Pringsheim,
and Rosenthal Uh. Then in nineteen two Heisenberg went to
Goodingen Goodingen as a University of Goodingen to study physics
(10:20):
under some more famous physicists, including Max Bourne, whose focus
was on quantum mechanics, particularly in statistical interpretation of the
wave functioned which we will talk about again and a
little bit because Schrodinger was definitely a wave functioned guy.
As it turns out, Heisenberg was different. He did not
(10:40):
really look at the wave function of quantum physics. He
was looking at something else. And now I'll explain that
when we get there, because that's fun for me. UM.
The born Max Boorne was also the director of theoretical
physics at the university and was Jewish, so he immigrated
to the United Kingdom when the Nazis came into power
in Germany and could tinued to research particle physics, well
(11:03):
well not quite particle physics, quantum physics and theoretical physics,
as well as teaching in the UK. Then you had
James Frank who was a physicistant, studied atomic and subatomic collisions,
particularly electrons colliding with adams, and also was of Jewish heritage.
So he would leave Germany in nineteen thirty three for
the United States and would later participate in what was
(11:25):
known as the Manhattan Project. We could do a full
episode on the Manhattan Project that in fact, Yeah, it's
an amazing story. UM. And here's another great story with
James Frank. So he won the Nobel Prize in n
for physics. He left the gold medal, the Nobel Prize
(11:46):
medal back in Germany when he left to essentially flee
to the United States. Um. There was another physicist named
George de Heavasy, and I know I'm saying that name wrong,
So I greatly apologize, but for once, we're talking about
someone who's not German, so I can't say his name.
But he he in order to protect this gold medal
from being taken by the Nazis and melted down, he
(12:09):
dissolved the metal and acid and then put the solution
on a shelf, so it's a solution with dissolved gold
on the shelf. World War two is over, he goes back,
the solution is still on the shelf. He then precipitates
that solution, precipitateing the gold out of the acid, and
he used the gold to melt it back into the
metal and meant a new and meant a new metal
(12:31):
so that they can give it uh back to James Frank.
So that I thought was a really cool story. Then
there's another professor he studied under was David Hilbert, was
a mathematician who focused on geometry and functional analysis, who
retired in n So he lived to see the Nazis
purge Germany of Jewish mathematicians and physicists, and was later
(12:52):
asked at a state dinner. He was actually asked a
question about what was the state of mathematics after it
had been quote unquote free of Jewish influence, and his
response was, there's no study of mathematics anymore. He was
essentially saying that the actions of the Nazis had effectively
into the entire field because they had they had removed
(13:15):
or or had caused to flee all of the leading
thinkers and instead, including like Einstein. So they were turning
mathematics and science into a political thing, and by doing that,
they were saying that these other things that did not
fit that political regime as invalid. And that's not the
way science works, not the way mathematics works, but that's
(13:36):
how we're demanding. It can be a very effective means
of controlling a population by controlling their education. Sure, but
also it also ends up meaning that you really you,
you just throw a huge monkey wrench into any kind
of advancement in those fields. So before World War two,
this is this is all happening before World War two,
(13:57):
and Heisenberg is studying under these different professors, so during
these years he has the ability to really pursue his
interests in theoretical physics and mathematics. So, uh, this was
on the in the nineteen twenties so and so was
before even the Third Wreck was coming into power at all. Right, right,
so that these are in the years between World War
(14:18):
One and the Nazis rise to power. So during those years,
that's when Heisenberg was studying. And while many of his
professors would end up having to flee or would be
removed from their jobs, at this time none of that
was necessarily evident that that was going to happen. So
he spent his time really talking with some of the
leading thinkers of the day when it comes to theoretical
(14:40):
physics and mathematics, right, um so Ine he earned his
PhD from the University of Munich and um went to
become an assistant to his old professor Maxi Born at
the University of getting In and so in he would
go to the University of Copenhagen and begin work with
Niels Henrik David Bore, who was Danish, not German, but
(15:04):
a Danish physicist and uh and of course he was
really interested in atomic radiation and atomic structure, and we
talked about the Boor model of the atom earlier in
the podcast um So. In nineteen six Heisenberg would go
to the University of Copenhagen for about a year and
then leave. But in ninety six there was a position
(15:25):
opening opening up at the University of Copenhagen for a
lecturer in theoretical physics. So Boor recommended Heisenberg, thinking that
Heisenberg was an up and coming leader in this space,
and so Heisenberg became the lecturer and theoretical physics at
the University of Copenhagen. Bore himself would be at Copenhagen
for quite some time until nineteen forty three, where he
(15:47):
would eventually flee to Sweden to escape the Nazis. Nineteen five,
that's when Heisenberg publishes his theory of quantum mechanics. So
he was of the ripe old age of twin d
three years old, twenty three years old, and he is, uh,
he is he is presenting a completely um well, he's
(16:10):
presenting his own, his own perspective on what quantum mechanics
actually is. As we'll see, that ends up getting kind
of assimilated into a unified view by looking at some
some other theories that Heisenberg did not necessarily agree with
at the time. Nope, not so much at all. As
it turns out, physicists, like any other type of human being,
(16:33):
can occasionally get very married to specific ideas and maybe
a little bit snarky. Yeah, there's some there's some great
quotes that we'll be reading. Yeah, but yeah, it turns
out that not everybody agreed on the behavior of particles
at that level because they were first of all, there
was no way to really directly observe them, so it's
(16:55):
all hypothetical, and it was mostly things like your equations
are are not as easy to understand my equations, therefore
my equations are better. That kind of thing. In fact,
that really is one of the arguments. So in n seven,
at the age of twenty six, you know, he's he's
definitely hitting that that middle age there for physicists. Twenty
(17:16):
six years old, he becomes the professor of theoretical physics
at the University of Leipsig, and this made him the
youngest full professor in Germany at the time. Yeah, so
he was certainly making a name for himself in the
in the academic world. In nineteen nine, he goes on
a lecture tour of the United States and Japan and India,
(17:38):
uh and in nineteen thirty two he receives the Nobel
Prize in Physics for his discovery of the allotropic forms
of hydrogen. It was is for from that paper that
he had published about quantum mechanics. Out of that one
of the applications was this discovery. Right. So, in case
you're wondering what the heck is an allotrope, it's a
different structural modification of an element. So let's take carbon.
(18:01):
Carbon is a great example. When you have a certain
structure of carbon, it forms graphite. Different structure of carbon
forms diamond too, slightly different substances. Yeah, these these different
these different manifestations of the same element. I mean, it's
it's the exact same element. It's just the way that
it's been or the way that it arranges itself determines
(18:24):
its qualities. And graphite and diamond are like nine day
they're incredibly different. So that's what an allotrope is is
these different manifestations of an element that have very different qualities.
With the case of hydrogen, we're talking about ortho hydrogen
and parahydrogen. Don't ask me what that actually means because
(18:45):
I'm not a physicist or a chemist, so I am
incapable of answering me, neither I am. I'm at a
loss there, but I do know that in ninety seven
Heisenberg married Elizabeth Schumacher, who he would go on to
have seven children with over the course of their marriage. Wow.
Now this is also the time when we're starting to
see the Nazis come into power in World War two
(19:06):
is beginning, and this was This becomes a pretty muddy
area of Heisenberg's life because it's hard to know which
historical records are the most accurate. Right, There's there's a
lot of contention within the historical community about um, what
exactly Heisenberg's personal views and um and roles were. In
(19:29):
all of this, he had become the target of of
Johannes's Stark n I'm just entering apologize with our English.
Our English pronunciation in German pronunciation are different and and
to be fair, the vocal downside of my family is
is really more like Polish Russian. So Johannes Stark was
(19:50):
also a physicist, but he was and he was a
physicist in fact, who in his UH in the twenties
had published a paper by Einstein. He had actually the
um UH solicited Einstein to write a paper for the
publication that he was editing, and it was a publication
that would eventually lead Einstein to ruminate upon the general
(20:12):
theory of relativity. It was sort of a kind of
a precursor to his general theory, which meant that in
a way, Johannes Stark was very much part of what
made Einstein a worldwide phenomenon. Now, the reason why I
say that's really interesting, or perhaps he might even say ironic,
is that Johannes Stark would align himself with the Nazi regime.
(20:35):
He wanted essentially to be the fewer of physics, which
is that's I mean, that's exactly the way I saw
it worded when I was reading the biography, which is
kind of terrifying. But he he also aligned himself with
the Deutsche Physics movement, the the German physics movement, and
he said that because Heisenberg continued to teach Einstein's theories
(20:59):
and classroom in Einstein's theories, of course we're not part
of this Deutsche physics, uh movement. That he was what
what Stark would call a white Jew or an arian Jew,
someone who is not Jewish by heritage but is by
association because he continues to teach these thoughts that Jewish
mathematicians and physicists had come up with, so that somehow
(21:23):
that meant that he was a traitor. Yes, so um
So Stark was very much opposed to Heisenberg and didn't
feel that Heisenberg should should have any sort of position
of authority. That did not stop Heisenberg from having that position.
He was obviously very important to the university and was
(21:44):
one of the few protected. Of course, part of it
was that he did not actually have any Jewish ancestry
that anyone could determine, so that kept him somewhat safe,
right sure, um you know, there's part of the debate
about Heisenberg is whether or not he um he stayed
in order to uh to help preserve Germany's scientific and
(22:05):
cultural communities, or whether he was actually working for the
Nazi Party. Um. He was made the director of the
German Adam Bomb project and spent about five years working
on that, supposedly, during which another portion of the debate
is whether he was working towards a nuclear reactor or
nuclear weapons, and no one is really entirely sure. Supposedly
(22:26):
he gave a report to Nazi official Albert Spear um
that as of one or so, it would take three
or four years for them to build a nuclear weapon,
and that that is part of why the Nazi Party said,
I'll forget this nuclear weapon thing, let's go with nuclear
reactors to help drive sure. Um and uh so, but
(22:50):
but you know, that's that's there's been other research um
for for example, one Paul Lawrence Rose wrote an entire
book called Heisenberg and the Nazi Coomic Bomb Project that
stated that, uh, Heisenberg wasn't being evasive to the Nazi Party,
that rather he was being truthful due to a basic
misunderstanding of the way that nuclear fission worked, and that
(23:13):
by the time he figured it out, it was when
the war was already winding down and he started to
hear about the atrocities that the Nazi Party had committed
and kind of reactively recreated this image of himself as
as having been an anti Nazi the entire time. And
that's the thing is that it's it's impossible for us
to say one way or the other because there are
(23:33):
conflicting reports and and really it's you know, it's just
it's a it's a difficult thing. Again. Once again, we
take our our our podcasting hats off to our sister
podcast stuff he missed in history class that deals with
this kind of stuff all the time. Oh sure, and
and especially you know, everything surrounding the Nazi Party is
incredibly sticky. Um. You know, some of my favorite favorite
(23:55):
stories about that time or stuff like like like like
Lenie Reefinstahl, who was one of the who was the
propagandist or a documentary filmmaker for the Nazi Party, And
I mean she she took tea with Hitler frequently and
has claimed forever that she never knew about the atrocities
that were going on. And so it's it's it's one
(24:15):
of those things like who do you believe? Yeah, and
uh yeah, getting back into into the what Heisenberg was
going through at this time. So there is there's an
argument to be made that he was trying to preserve
the scientific community in Germany as best he could, because
there were others who were also trying to do that.
(24:35):
Max Planck, for example, was also trying to um to
do that. Although Plank had hoped that the the rise
of the Nazis was just a temporary kind of kerfuffle
and that it wasn't going to balloon into this incredible
conflict that would span the entire globe. He just had
(24:55):
no He had no concept of that actually happening. So
he had to stay and to try and keep the
German departments of mathematics and physics as intact as possible.
So it could be that that's the case, We honestly
don't know. In ninety one, Heisenberg becomes the professor of
physics at the University of Berlin and the director of
(25:17):
the kaiserville Helm Institute for Physics. And in nineteen forty
five Heisenberg is taken prisoner by American troops and is
sent to England. UH. He's freed in nineteen forty six
and returns to Germany and helps rebuild the Institute for
Physics at Guttingen and then UH that eventually becomes the
Max Planck Institute for Physics, which would eventually relocate and
(25:41):
I believe I believe Heisenberg personally renamed the institute them
on Max Plunks. And he would continue to travel and
give lectures about his work, in fact doing so almost
right up to when he died. He died in on
February one, nineteen seventy six after developing cancer, so he
was very much active in the world of lectures and
(26:03):
academia well after the end of World War Two. Yeah,
towards the end of his life he became interested in
plasma physics and a thermonuclear processes. So see, it's uh,
you know, it's certainly one of those interesting timelines. And
in a moment, we're going to really dive into what
his contributions were in the field of quantum mechanics and
(26:25):
give a full explanation or as as full as we
possibly can make it of what the uncertainty principle is
all about, as well as why it's important in technology,
because yes, this does have to do with tech. It's
just going to take us a while to get there. Okay, guys,
I'm not really sure what's about to happen. You could
say I'm uncertain, So let's take a quick break, all right,
(26:55):
So now it's time to dive into quantum mechanics. I
gotta tell you, I'm not really certain about this. I'm
just gonna keep making that joke excellent until it's funny. Um. So, yeah,
he was. Heisenberg had worked in theoretical physics and quantum
mechanics during the early early days of the discipline, and
he was particularly interested in studying the radiation from an atom.
(27:19):
But here's the thing that he was also interested in
seeing what was actually observable, you know, really look at
the atom and see what you could actually see it
because we had all these hypothetical particles in these theoretical particles,
things that that should exist based upon the math involved.
But but but the science at the time was based
on on bombarding these these tiny, tiny, tiny sub atomic
(27:43):
particles with um with things like gamma radiation and then
observing what we could observe, right, And so he began
to differentiate between what you could observe and what you
could not, and then he started to notice things. He
said that, you know, we can't really always assign a
position in space to a specific electron at any given time,
and we can't follow electrons around their orbits. It's it's
(28:06):
not like a planetary orbit that we can watch continuously, right,
It's more like there's an area that an electron could
be in, as opposed to we can specifically point out
that this is where the electron is at any given moment,
or this is the direction it is traveling at any
given moment, and this would start to plant the seed
in his mind for the uncertainty principle. So first he
(28:30):
said that you know, bores postulation that the the the
orbits of electrons are around the nucleus was more or
less correct. You couldn't actually be certain of what those
orbits were because the unobservable nature of these electrons move. Yeah,
there's just no way to assign a figure to this.
You can't say the electron is in uh, this particular
(28:51):
quadrant around the nucleus UM and you couldn't talk about
really the electron's velocity either. Velocity, by the way, is
speed us direction, right, And so he started to say
that instead of using um classic numbers, the kinds of
numbers that we would use to describe human scale physics,
that that we needed to use matrices. Yeah, and a
(29:15):
matrix is essentially an abstract mathematical structure. So this was
almost like talking about probabilities. It's it's kind of fuzzy,
it's not specific, it's not precise. And in fact, that
was Heisenberg's argument, was that precision is something that you
could strive for, but you were never ever going to
get Uh, he kind of arrived at this gradually. So
(29:39):
in ninety he was involved in a bit of a spat,
a debate, if you will, about a theoretical spat actually
was real spat about theory, but it was on. So
you had two sides to this debate. You had Heisenberg
and his his fellow physicists, who I thought of quantum
(30:01):
mechanics in the term of these matrices, these this abstract
mathematic way of describing the position or motion of an electron,
because again he was arguing that you could not define
it in a way that was like it's at x,
y and z coordinates. You could not do that. I
was using the matrix. And there was another set of
(30:22):
scientists who were trying to describe some atomic particles as
as waves the way that we would electromagnetic radiation, unlike
or own Strodinger. Yeah, Schrodinger, Schrodinger, Yeah, he and his
kitty cat. Actually Schroedinger and the cat story is kind
of interesting, just a little side notes. So you've probably
heard of Schrodinger's cat, where Schrodinger was uh, kind of
(30:44):
giving a thought experiment kind of thing to explain how
how this this other form the matrix form of quantum
mechanics is a little weird. The idea that you have
a cat inside a box, and inside that box you
also have a little canister with poisonous gas estenate, and
there's some explosive that has a that that will go
(31:04):
off at some point and I am giving a variation classic. So,
so within half an hour there's a fifty chance that
the explosive inside that canstor has gone off and released
the poisonous gas and little killed the cat. Yes, kitty
is no more one life down, eight to go. There's
(31:24):
also a fifty percent chance that the that the explosion
has not yet happened, and that Kitty is fine but
possibly very bored inside this box. And so the thing
is that because of uh, this this weird quantum effect,
and keep in mind this is really something that only
happens at the quantum level. When you get up to
the macro level that we see this is not actually
(31:48):
the case. But the idea is that the cat is
both alive and dead at the same time, and superposition
that has both states and superposition, and it's only when
you open up the box and observe the cat that
one of those two possibilities becomes true, becomes true, and
the other one just becomes yeah, it goes away, and
that then you have either the live cat or the
(32:10):
dead cat, so that the cat is said to be
alive and debt at the same time until you observe it,
and that's when reality snaps into place and you suddenly
get one of the two results. And it was kind
of a way of saying like this is just, you know,
kind of crazy. It's turned out to be one of
those things we always refer to anyway. So Schroinger's cat
and Heisenberg's and certainty principle both are trying to explain
(32:32):
various weird things about the quantum level. There's another one
that we can touch on also that gets confused with
Heisenberg's and certainty principle, which is the idea that by
observing something you actually affect the outcome. So in other words,
when we're looking at sub atomic particles, simply shining light
onto them affects their movement, because we're talking about photons
(32:55):
impacting subatomic particles, which changes the pathway, which means just
by taking an observation in a measurement, you have changed
what has what was going to happen. So it makes
it even more impossible to predict things based upon the
behaviors of stuff, because just by observing it, you change
what that outcome actually is. Now that's not heisenberg'sun certainty
(33:18):
principle either, but it often gets confused. So we've got
this debate. We've got the wave mechanics debate, and that's
Schrodinger's side, and we've got the matrices debate, and that's
Heisenberg's side. And the debate was not always civil. Uh,
there was there. There was a quote that Heisenberg made
to another physicist, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, which was, the more
(33:41):
I think about the physical portion of Schrodinger's theory, the
more repulsive I find it. What Schrodinger writes about the visualizability. Visualizability, Boy,
that's a hard word. Of his theory is probably not
quite right. In other words, it's crap thick burn. Yeah,
that was a little that was a little rough. So
here's what the difference was between these two. Stroutinger's approach
(34:04):
require less complicated math to explain the relationship of a
sub atomic particles movement and and and it's it's position
around a nucleus example, an electron around the nucleus as
an example, and it furthermore explained some of the things
that Heisenberg's theory couldn't really fully explain. It's sort of
(34:25):
it's sort of pushed them under the rug in a way,
because Heisenberg's approach showed that there were these little quantum
jumps quantum leaps as if yes, exactly, there's quantum leaps
when you cannot quite solve the problem, or you solve
the problem and then you have to leap into the
next body and hopefully your next leap is the one
that takes you home. No, in this case, the quantum
(34:45):
jumps were the fact that you would see electrons behave
in a weird way, like suddenly an electron would behave
as if it had a higher amount of energy than
it normally would, and that was, you know, Heisenberg's approach
showed these well with Schroedinger's approach, because we're talking about
a continuous wave a wave function, it smooths everything out,
(35:07):
so you don't have these jagged, you know, jumps, you
have just a smooth transition um. So the Schroedinger's argument
was that, hey, you know, I've looked at the way
you are calculating this, and I look at the way
I'm calculating this, and it turns out the outcomes are
the same. We're getting the same results, but mine requires
less complicated math and not all this mathematic abstraction that
(35:30):
you are insisting upon. So therefore I'm right and you're wrong,
or at least mine is more eloquent. So you've got
these two parties of physicists getting a little caddy Schroedinger caddy.
Perhaps um, there are alive cats and dead cats. But then, uh,
it's interesting because you started getting into other physicists getting
(35:53):
into the game, including Ernst Pascal Jordan's or Jordan I suppose,
who was a German physicist who attact later joined the
Nazi Party, become part of that movement, in fact enlisted
in the Luftwaffe. Um. And then you had Paul de
Rak who was an English physicist who both created unified
equations that took the wave function approach and the matrices
(36:15):
approach and combine them into what was called a transformation theory,
which is the very basis of quantum mechanics. So again
this is all theoretical, it's essentially trying physicists trying to
figure out how to to apply the same sort of
observation that they had in classical interpretation of physics on
the macro scale to the quantum level, which is the
(36:38):
incredibly tiny scale the atomic or subatomic scale, at which
their rules do not apply. Right. So, but the transformation
theory ended up showing that there was a combination of
both Schroedinger's approach and Heisenberg's approach the sort of wave
particle duality that we know about with quantum mechanics. That's
kind of what was coming out of this discussion. So
instead of them both saying no, I'm right, now, I'm right,
(37:00):
these guys are like, well, actually you're both right. Technically, yeah,
light is a particle and a wave, and it gets boy,
toy doesn't get even more crazy, Like it seems magical
to those of us who are used to classical physics
on that macro scale, because if things on the macro
scale behaved the same way that things in the quantum
(37:20):
scale behaved, it would be like we were living in
Harry Potter World or something right right there, there would
be a lot of a lot of you know, people
suddenly jumping to the left right. Yeah, because you know,
or you can never really be sure where someone was
or how quickly they were moving and and emitting light
when they did it, they'd be half dead and half
alive until you looked at them. Yeah, there's a whole
bunch of things that would be pretty bizarre in our world.
(37:43):
We'll be right back with more of this classic episode
of tech stuff after this quick break. So Heisenberg studied
Jordan and de Rocks papers and found that there were
probably ms whenever he tried to measure the basic physical
variables appearing in the equations. And by physical variables, I
(38:06):
mean an electrons position and its momentum. So that led
Heisenberg to create the famous principle of uncertainty, which he
did in nine seven. We usually call that Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
So here's here's how it breaks down. The more precisely
you determine the position of a sub atomic particle, for example,
an electron around the nucleus, So the more precisely you
(38:27):
determine its position, the less precisely you can know about
the momentum at that moment, and vice versa. So if
you more precisely determine the subotomic particles momentum, the less
precisely you can know its actual position, right um. So specifically,
he was saying that um that running the calculation for this,
(38:48):
for this determination of the position and the momentum um
necessarily contains errors, the product of which physically cannot be
less than the quantum constant h Plancks constant, which is
the smallest unit the quantum of action in an atom. Right.
And so what he's saying here is that it doesn't
matter how advanced your measurement apparatus is. In fact, there
(39:14):
was one point where More criticized Heisenberg's approach because he
said that he was using essentially microscopes that were not
precise enough, and in fact it made an error. And
then Heisenberg got really upset a Bore, and the two
of them had a falling out that lasted about a year,
and then Heisenberg eventually wrote a paper and acknowledge He said,
(39:34):
you know, Bore has criticized this because of such and such,
an acknowledged that in fact there was an error, but
said that ultimately that error was beside the point because
it would not matter how precise that was the fact
remained that the more you would learn about one thing,
the less you could know about the other. That's the
uncertainty or complimentarianism is another way that some people have
said that there's this complementary relationship between the momentum and
(39:58):
the position. So in case you I want to know
what momentum is, that's mass times velocity. Velocity is that
speed and direction, So that's important to know. So on
the human scale, this uncertainty is completely negligible. There's you
might as well just throw it out the window because
on our scale it just doesn't that it doesn't factor
into it. It's such a tiny thing. But when you
look at the smaller scales, this tiny tiny thing becomes
(40:20):
huge because you're looking at things on an incredibly small scale.
And because we can't know but with precision both a
sub atomics particles, a position and its momentum, we cannot
really make predictions about what's going to happen in the future.
And in fact, uh this is where Heisenberg says causality
becomes a problem because if you cannot determine that subatomic
(40:41):
particles position and momentum, you cannot actually know what's going
to happen next. So if you were to expand this out,
now this is this is to the absurd, But if
you were to expand this out, you could say that
you cannot for certain know that by doing a certain action,
a particular effect is going to follow. That's not really
the case with classical physics again, because we're talking about
the macro scale, but on the qualm scale, that's the
(41:03):
case we cannot really know what will happen from one
moment to the next because we can't know enough about
all the factors to make that determination, which is which
is kind of wonderful and kind of terrifying right simultaneously,
and though it's a cat in a box yep. And
and then this also ties into that observation problem, right
because if we even if we observe the phenomenon, then
(41:23):
we're affecting, we're changing the phenomens. We're making it even
more impossible to determine what the effect is going to be.
The cause and effect at the scale is something that
becomes purely theoretical, because as soon as you try and
apply practical approaches to it, it all breaks down. And
we promise this really does relate directly to technology, we're
getting there. So we then show that light can be
(41:44):
interpreted as both wave functions and as a particle. That's
with Boor and Heisenberg together working, they were able to
kind of come to this conclusion. And as soon as
you decide how to observe a particular experiment, that interpretation
become is true and the other interpretation collapses. So, in
other words, if you're looking at light as a wave,
you see it as a wave. If you look at
(42:05):
light as a particle, you see it as a particle,
and the other half of that interpretation goes away, which
is insane. They were talking about it about how how
you observe the experiment, we disturb untouched nature and we
become limited and learning about nature as it really is.
In other words, we have a very narrow view into
(42:26):
what reality is, and once we focus that view on something,
we cannot know everything else that's outside of that view.
So imagine that you have a telescope and you are
using that telescope to look at something that's on the
distant horizon, and you can see that you can see
the thing that's on the horizon, but everything else has
(42:46):
faded away. It's like all of that's just gone. That's
kind of what the sort of an analogy as to
what he was saying here, which is disturbing to think
about in a way, but that's how reality works, so
you gotta come of deal with it um. So Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle in Stringer's wave functions become the basis of
the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. And the reason why
(43:11):
we even did this podcast besides the fact that I
think someone actually asked us to and Lauren's going to
look that up, but the reason why we're doing this
is because heisenberg'suncertainty principle plays into the way that we
use electronics today, because now we're working with electronics that
have components that are on this tiny, tiny skin at
(43:32):
least the nano scale, which is one one factor up
from atomic but far away. The flow of electrons is
critical for modern absolutely and while we're making these tiny
transistors or transistor elements that are part of these integrated circuits,
you know, the whole purpose of transistors is to guide
the flow of electrons, to allow them to pass or
to not allow them to pass through a circuit. Well,
(43:54):
if you make the gates really thin. Heisenberg's and certainty
principle tells us that there is a kind of a
zone in which you might find an electron, and because
of the uncertainty about the electron's momentum or energy, sometimes
that electron can jump up an energy level because of
(44:14):
our uncertainty, we we you know, it just will pop
up an energy level and then pop back down, which
means they can be found in a slightly larger zone
than you would not necessarily expect based upon its actual
energy level, which can be problematic when when you've got
these incredibly thin gates that are supposed to be keeping
an electrons on one side, right, that that zone might
(44:35):
extend beyond the far side of that gate. And if
the zone extends beyond the far side of the gate,
that means that it's possible for an electron to appear
on the other side of the gate without having actually
passed through that circuit, which means called electron tunneling. And
since it's possible, it happens, which which means that, yeah,
(44:55):
unless we figure out ways of getting around these you know,
these these fundamental quantum phenomena that we you know, there's
a point where you cannot make the components any smaller
because the electrons just won't play ball. They're just gonna
go every way that the fundamental quantum traffic laws, as
you put it in our exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it means
(45:16):
that that you're you're gonna get errors in your various
chips because they will not be allowing the or or
preventing the electrons from flowing the way they're supposed to,
because the electrons are just going to be able to
tunnel right through when when those uh, those energy levels
bump up uncertainly. It's bizarre, it's so weird to think
about um. But engineers have found ways of working around that,
(45:39):
using different materials that uh that that minimize this so
that they can continue to make things smaller and smaller.
But we will reach a point when that is just
not going to be the way that chips will be
designed anymore. Either will will plateau and we won't be
able to make chips with smaller components, or will find
a different means of useing sub atomic particles to process information,
(46:03):
and we'll move away from electron based chips, which is
hard to consider. It's really weird to think about. Yeah,
that's not that that that is beyond my entire brain
right now. Yeah, I'm actually starting to feel a nosebleed
coming on because I'm a I'm an English literature major.
Al Right, well, let's let's bring this back to something,
to something a little bit more peaceful and serene. I
(46:24):
have I have a quote from Heisenberg via via pds um.
He once said natural science does not simply describe and
explain nature. It's part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
It describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.
That's pretty cool, which I thought was nice. I thought
that that was a much less nosebleedy way of saying
(46:44):
that that we mess stuff up scientifically. And also it
also is less uh nasty than his note to U
or note about Shrodinger. Right. So um oh, I found
the name of the person who requested this via Facebook.
This was from listener Peter. So Peter asked us about this,
and I hope that we were able to answer your
(47:05):
questions to uh your satisfaction. It was certainly to the
best of our ability, keeping in mind that neither of
us are theoretical physicists. Not by a long show mathematicians
for that matter. Uh fascinating subject, and there are a
lot of books out there that are really really good
about explaining Heisenberg's role and also the contributions of his contemporaries,
(47:26):
everyone from Einstein to Somerville, to Schroedinger to to all
all the great physicists of the nineteen twenties and thirties
who have really made modern technology possible through their discoveries.
And that wraps up another classic episode of tech Stuff.
I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any
(47:46):
suggestions for future topics, reach out to me. You can
get in touch on Twitter or on Facebook. The handle
at both of those is tech Stuff hs W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(48:10):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech, and it is time
for a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode is titled
Say My Name. It published originally on September two, thousand thirteen.
(00:30):
I'm guessing this one's about Heisenberg. That's right. I'm going
purely by the title here. I have not gone back
to listen to this episode. I'm going to experience this
again with you guys. Obviously not for the first time.
I was there in but dude, I can't remember last Tuesday.
So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode.
(00:50):
Werner Heisenberg. Right, I'm just not sure about this topic. Heisenberg, Right, okay,
wall I think I have some notes on him too,
are you? This is he was born on December five,
nineteen o one. Yes, that one, the physicist. Yes, the
famous theoretical physicist. All right, well, all right, maybe I
won't get a geek out about breaking bad, but that's fine.
(01:12):
We can talk about Vernon Heisenberg. I like that your
German pronunciation is better than the lady with the last
name vocal bomb. That's pretty that's pretty great. Um So
born on December five, nineteen o one, in Verzberg. Uh
and yeah, Heisenberg has played an incredibly important role in
(01:32):
the establishment that that's the foundations of what is quantum mechanics. Right.
If you've heard of something something called the uncertainty principle,
that is a k A. Heisenberg's u certain new principle,
that that is, he is the operative Heisenberg. In this
we will we will explain what that uncertainty principle is
in certain terms, but that will be towards the second
(01:55):
half of the podcast. First we wanted to kind of
talk about who he was, sort of his background. His
father was an expert in Middle and modern Greek languages.
That's a Dr. August Heisenberg. His mother was any wink Lin.
Winklin wink Lin was w there's no W sound in German.
(02:15):
It's um, yeah, so vs or fs and and w
s or vs. That's easy to remember, simple, all right, Yeah,
so yeah, he he um. It's funny because I understand
that his his own background in Greek. His father was
an expert in Greek. His own background in Greek meant
that when they got to the point where physicists were
(02:36):
starting to name theoretical and he would correct people's use
of Greek, saying things like, you cannot spell it this
way because that's not how it would be actually spelled
if such a thing existed in the Greek language. So
so he was, um, you know, helping us stay on
the rails as far as the use of Greek, right
(02:56):
while he was growing up. When he was twelve, that
is when Neil's Bore presents did his general theory of
of quantum existence. Yes, so Bore would be incredibly important
during Heisenberg's education. But Niels Bore also known for making
the Bore model of the atom. So that was the
model the atom that suggested that you had a central
(03:17):
nucleus and then electrons that were orbiting nucleus. Yeah, so
that's you know, anyone who's taken any any class in
chemistry or physics has seen the Boor model. It's still
one of those things that um usually is. It's part
of the history of the development of particle physics and
quantum mechanics. Right. We we know now that it's a
(03:39):
little bit um simplified Yeah. In fact, Heisenberg would go
on to be the one who right exactly right, Uh,
he was. While he was in high school, there was
a major event that played out across the entire world
and particularly in Europe. World War One. Yeah, World War
One happened between nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighteen. So of
(04:00):
Heisenberg's academic contemporaries, or not even contemporaries, some of his
mentors had actually served in World War One, various officers
in the military, right right. Um, Heisenberg himself had to
leave school, leave high school to go help harvest crops
in Bavaria at the time. And um, by by the
time he got back after the war, he was deeply
(04:21):
involved in youth groups like the New Boy Scouts. That
we're trying to rebuild the science and artistic culture in Germany. Right,
So keep in mind, like at this time in Germany,
things are really tumultuous. I mean, World War One was
already one of those events that that played upon certain
sentiments in Germany, and after the war was concluded, that
(04:46):
got even more messy because you had the rest of
the world, uh, you know, trying to deal with this
situation and make sure that it could not happen again.
I mean, this was one of those wars that no
one really expected whatever happened. But as the idea was
that everyone would be building up their armies to a
point that anyone would be crazy to attack anyone else.
And as it turns out, humans are crazy, y'all. So um, yeah,
(05:09):
we it was. It was one of those things where
where as in an attempt to prevent this from happening again,
there were a lot of reparations demanded against Germany. This
in turn ended up fueling a lot of resentment in
Germany and would eventually give the Nazi movement sort of
the kind of foothold. Yeah exactly, It gave them that
(05:30):
that that place to build some support, because you had
all these Germans who felt that that their lives had
been ruined as a result of the actions that followed
World War One. Now that plays a big role in
Heisenberg's life because this is also a time when physicists
are making incredible discoveries. We are learning more about the
(05:54):
quantum world, that that atomic scale world than ever before.
The instruments that were being made were becoming precise enough
for us to look at things on a level that
we never could have seen before. So there is a
figurative explosion in physics at this time and a lot
of and sometimes literal explosions. But a lot of the
(06:16):
physicists that were active at this time, particularly in Germany,
were of Jewish descent. Now, of course that would cause
play another important role once we talk about the rise
of the Nazi movement and the entry into World War two.
Obviously that's going to to really shake things up. But
before we get to that point, we talk more a
(06:37):
little about about Heisenberg's educational background. Once World War One
had concluded, he attended the Maximilian School at Munich and
then eventually the University of Munich. He originally went to
study math, but according to reports, a professor wouldn't let
him into an advanced seminar, and that's when he switched
to physics. And just imagine what the world would be
(06:59):
like without that, I mean, quantum physics, for example, might
have a very different approach, particularly when you start talking
about people like Schrodinger, and we will and maybe we'll
even mention his cat so uh. At the university, he
studied physics with professors like Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld, who
was a theoretical physicist. Uh he was a physicist who
(07:23):
would stay on teaching even during World War Two, so
he stayed in Germany and continued to teach. He did
get a little upset that the well more than a
little upset that his departments were being completely yet purged
of anyone who had any sort of Jewish background, whether
(07:43):
they self identified as Jewish or if they had maybe
an ancestor the three generations back who was Jewish. Sure. Also,
according to some reports, the Nazis considered the theoretical physics
as a field to be Jewish. Yes, yes, because there
were there were so many Jewish inkers who were the
leaders of theoretical physics that the Nazis looked down upon
(08:06):
the entire discipline as being something that was impure and
should be completely purged. And in fact, instead they wanted
to have Deutsche physique that's German physics as a study
as opposed to theoretical physics, so that would also disrupt
the advances that could have happened during that time. Another
professor was Wilhelm Karl Ferner Otto Fritz Franvien, you're just
(08:30):
enjoying saying these names, aren't you? Will Helm Vien is
usually how we we say that, but yes, you're The
answer to that question is yes, I love. I love
saying German names. Uh. He was a physicist and he
focused on black body radiation and electromagnetics magnetism rather and
he passed away in n So he died before World
War two began. He died before the Nazis had really
(08:52):
taken control of Germany. Um there was Alfred Pringsheim who
was a professor of mathematics and had Jewish roots. During
the Nazi regime, he would see his entire fortune taken
from him. Everything he had inherited a huge fortune and
everything he owned was taken by the Nazis. He was
eventually forced to change his name to Alfred Israel Prinsheim
(09:15):
because of his Jewish ancestry. One wonderfully racists, you know,
the Nazis were not known for being subtle with the
way that they treated any one of Jewish heritage. And
then a fourth professor was Arthur Rosenthal, who had a
focus on geometry as well as dynamical systems, also had
Jewish roots. He would be forced from his position in
(09:37):
nineteen thirty six by the Nazis and would eventually immigrate
to the United States and nineteen nine and taught at
the University of Michigan, which has come up a lot
in our conversations recently because that's where Sid went to.
But he taught at the University of Michigan, then eventually
taught at the University of New Mexico and then later
at Purdue University. So these were the four professors who
(09:58):
really kind of sparked Heisenberg's fascination with physics and mathematics,
and this is founding in in those subjects exactly, so Somerfeld, Veen, Pringsheim,
and Rosenthal Uh. Then in nineteen two Heisenberg went to
Goodingen Goodingen as a University of Goodingen to study physics
(10:20):
under some more famous physicists, including Max Bourne, whose focus
was on quantum mechanics, particularly in statistical interpretation of the
wave functioned which we will talk about again and a
little bit because Schrodinger was definitely a wave functioned guy.
As it turns out, Heisenberg was different. He did not
(10:40):
really look at the wave function of quantum physics. He
was looking at something else. And now I'll explain that
when we get there, because that's fun for me. UM.
The born Max Boorne was also the director of theoretical
physics at the university and was Jewish, so he immigrated
to the United Kingdom when the Nazis came into power
in Germany and could tinued to research particle physics, well
(11:03):
well not quite particle physics, quantum physics and theoretical physics,
as well as teaching in the UK. Then you had
James Frank who was a physicistant, studied atomic and subatomic collisions,
particularly electrons colliding with adams, and also was of Jewish heritage.
So he would leave Germany in nineteen thirty three for
the United States and would later participate in what was
(11:25):
known as the Manhattan Project. We could do a full
episode on the Manhattan Project that in fact, Yeah, it's
an amazing story. UM. And here's another great story with
James Frank. So he won the Nobel Prize in n
for physics. He left the gold medal, the Nobel Prize
(11:46):
medal back in Germany when he left to essentially flee
to the United States. Um. There was another physicist named
George de Heavasy, and I know I'm saying that name wrong,
So I greatly apologize, but for once, we're talking about
someone who's not German, so I can't say his name.
But he he in order to protect this gold medal
from being taken by the Nazis and melted down, he
(12:09):
dissolved the metal and acid and then put the solution
on a shelf, so it's a solution with dissolved gold
on the shelf. World War two is over, he goes back,
the solution is still on the shelf. He then precipitates
that solution, precipitateing the gold out of the acid, and
he used the gold to melt it back into the
metal and meant a new and meant a new metal
(12:31):
so that they can give it uh back to James Frank.
So that I thought was a really cool story. Then
there's another professor he studied under was David Hilbert, was
a mathematician who focused on geometry and functional analysis, who
retired in n So he lived to see the Nazis
purge Germany of Jewish mathematicians and physicists, and was later
(12:52):
asked at a state dinner. He was actually asked a
question about what was the state of mathematics after it
had been quote unquote free of Jewish influence, and his
response was, there's no study of mathematics anymore. He was
essentially saying that the actions of the Nazis had effectively
into the entire field because they had they had removed
(13:15):
or or had caused to flee all of the leading
thinkers and instead, including like Einstein. So they were turning
mathematics and science into a political thing, and by doing that,
they were saying that these other things that did not
fit that political regime as invalid. And that's not the
way science works, not the way mathematics works, but that's
(13:36):
how we're demanding. It can be a very effective means
of controlling a population by controlling their education. Sure, but
also it also ends up meaning that you really you,
you just throw a huge monkey wrench into any kind
of advancement in those fields. So before World War two,
this is this is all happening before World War two,
(13:57):
and Heisenberg is studying under these different professors, so during
these years he has the ability to really pursue his
interests in theoretical physics and mathematics. So, uh, this was
on the in the nineteen twenties so and so was
before even the Third Wreck was coming into power at all. Right, right,
so that these are in the years between World War
(14:18):
One and the Nazis rise to power. So during those years,
that's when Heisenberg was studying. And while many of his
professors would end up having to flee or would be
removed from their jobs, at this time none of that
was necessarily evident that that was going to happen. So
he spent his time really talking with some of the
leading thinkers of the day when it comes to theoretical
(14:40):
physics and mathematics, right, um so Ine he earned his
PhD from the University of Munich and um went to
become an assistant to his old professor Maxi Born at
the University of getting In and so in he would
go to the University of Copenhagen and begin work with
Niels Henrik David Bore, who was Danish, not German, but
(15:04):
a Danish physicist and uh and of course he was
really interested in atomic radiation and atomic structure, and we
talked about the Boor model of the atom earlier in
the podcast um So. In nineteen six Heisenberg would go
to the University of Copenhagen for about a year and
then leave. But in ninety six there was a position
(15:25):
opening opening up at the University of Copenhagen for a
lecturer in theoretical physics. So Boor recommended Heisenberg, thinking that
Heisenberg was an up and coming leader in this space,
and so Heisenberg became the lecturer and theoretical physics at
the University of Copenhagen. Bore himself would be at Copenhagen
for quite some time until nineteen forty three, where he
(15:47):
would eventually flee to Sweden to escape the Nazis. Nineteen five,
that's when Heisenberg publishes his theory of quantum mechanics. So
he was of the ripe old age of twin d
three years old, twenty three years old, and he is, uh,
he is he is presenting a completely um well, he's
(16:10):
presenting his own, his own perspective on what quantum mechanics
actually is. As we'll see, that ends up getting kind
of assimilated into a unified view by looking at some
some other theories that Heisenberg did not necessarily agree with
at the time. Nope, not so much at all. As
it turns out, physicists, like any other type of human being,
(16:33):
can occasionally get very married to specific ideas and maybe
a little bit snarky. Yeah, there's some there's some great
quotes that we'll be reading. Yeah, but yeah, it turns
out that not everybody agreed on the behavior of particles
at that level because they were first of all, there
was no way to really directly observe them, so it's
(16:55):
all hypothetical, and it was mostly things like your equations
are are not as easy to understand my equations, therefore
my equations are better. That kind of thing. In fact,
that really is one of the arguments. So in n seven,
at the age of twenty six, you know, he's he's
definitely hitting that that middle age there for physicists. Twenty
(17:16):
six years old, he becomes the professor of theoretical physics
at the University of Leipsig, and this made him the
youngest full professor in Germany at the time. Yeah, so
he was certainly making a name for himself in the
in the academic world. In nineteen nine, he goes on
a lecture tour of the United States and Japan and India,
(17:38):
uh and in nineteen thirty two he receives the Nobel
Prize in Physics for his discovery of the allotropic forms
of hydrogen. It was is for from that paper that
he had published about quantum mechanics. Out of that one
of the applications was this discovery. Right. So, in case
you're wondering what the heck is an allotrope, it's a
different structural modification of an element. So let's take carbon.
(18:01):
Carbon is a great example. When you have a certain
structure of carbon, it forms graphite. Different structure of carbon
forms diamond too, slightly different substances. Yeah, these these different
these different manifestations of the same element. I mean, it's
it's the exact same element. It's just the way that
it's been or the way that it arranges itself determines
(18:24):
its qualities. And graphite and diamond are like nine day
they're incredibly different. So that's what an allotrope is is
these different manifestations of an element that have very different qualities.
With the case of hydrogen, we're talking about ortho hydrogen
and parahydrogen. Don't ask me what that actually means because
(18:45):
I'm not a physicist or a chemist, so I am
incapable of answering me, neither I am. I'm at a
loss there, but I do know that in ninety seven
Heisenberg married Elizabeth Schumacher, who he would go on to
have seven children with over the course of their marriage. Wow.
Now this is also the time when we're starting to
see the Nazis come into power in World War two
(19:06):
is beginning, and this was This becomes a pretty muddy
area of Heisenberg's life because it's hard to know which
historical records are the most accurate. Right, There's there's a
lot of contention within the historical community about um, what
exactly Heisenberg's personal views and um and roles were. In
(19:29):
all of this, he had become the target of of
Johannes's Stark n I'm just entering apologize with our English.
Our English pronunciation in German pronunciation are different and and
to be fair, the vocal downside of my family is
is really more like Polish Russian. So Johannes Stark was
(19:50):
also a physicist, but he was and he was a
physicist in fact, who in his UH in the twenties
had published a paper by Einstein. He had actually the
um UH solicited Einstein to write a paper for the
publication that he was editing, and it was a publication
that would eventually lead Einstein to ruminate upon the general
(20:12):
theory of relativity. It was sort of a kind of
a precursor to his general theory, which meant that in
a way, Johannes Stark was very much part of what
made Einstein a worldwide phenomenon. Now, the reason why I
say that's really interesting, or perhaps he might even say ironic,
is that Johannes Stark would align himself with the Nazi regime.
(20:35):
He wanted essentially to be the fewer of physics, which
is that's I mean, that's exactly the way I saw
it worded when I was reading the biography, which is
kind of terrifying. But he he also aligned himself with
the Deutsche Physics movement, the the German physics movement, and
he said that because Heisenberg continued to teach Einstein's theories
(20:59):
and classroom in Einstein's theories, of course we're not part
of this Deutsche physics, uh movement. That he was what
what Stark would call a white Jew or an arian Jew,
someone who is not Jewish by heritage but is by
association because he continues to teach these thoughts that Jewish
mathematicians and physicists had come up with, so that somehow
(21:23):
that meant that he was a traitor. Yes, so um
So Stark was very much opposed to Heisenberg and didn't
feel that Heisenberg should should have any sort of position
of authority. That did not stop Heisenberg from having that position.
He was obviously very important to the university and was
(21:44):
one of the few protected. Of course, part of it
was that he did not actually have any Jewish ancestry
that anyone could determine, so that kept him somewhat safe,
right sure, um you know, there's part of the debate
about Heisenberg is whether or not he um he stayed
in order to uh to help preserve Germany's scientific and
(22:05):
cultural communities, or whether he was actually working for the
Nazi Party. Um. He was made the director of the
German Adam Bomb project and spent about five years working
on that, supposedly, during which another portion of the debate
is whether he was working towards a nuclear reactor or
nuclear weapons, and no one is really entirely sure. Supposedly
(22:26):
he gave a report to Nazi official Albert Spear um
that as of one or so, it would take three
or four years for them to build a nuclear weapon,
and that that is part of why the Nazi Party said,
I'll forget this nuclear weapon thing, let's go with nuclear
reactors to help drive sure. Um and uh so, but
(22:50):
but you know, that's that's there's been other research um
for for example, one Paul Lawrence Rose wrote an entire
book called Heisenberg and the Nazi Coomic Bomb Project that
stated that, uh, Heisenberg wasn't being evasive to the Nazi Party,
that rather he was being truthful due to a basic
misunderstanding of the way that nuclear fission worked, and that
(23:13):
by the time he figured it out, it was when
the war was already winding down and he started to
hear about the atrocities that the Nazi Party had committed
and kind of reactively recreated this image of himself as
as having been an anti Nazi the entire time. And
that's the thing is that it's it's impossible for us
to say one way or the other because there are
(23:33):
conflicting reports and and really it's you know, it's just
it's a it's a difficult thing. Again. Once again, we
take our our our podcasting hats off to our sister
podcast stuff he missed in history class that deals with
this kind of stuff all the time. Oh sure, and
and especially you know, everything surrounding the Nazi Party is
incredibly sticky. Um. You know, some of my favorite favorite
(23:55):
stories about that time or stuff like like like like
Lenie Reefinstahl, who was one of the who was the
propagandist or a documentary filmmaker for the Nazi Party, And
I mean she she took tea with Hitler frequently and
has claimed forever that she never knew about the atrocities
that were going on. And so it's it's it's one
(24:15):
of those things like who do you believe? Yeah, and
uh yeah, getting back into into the what Heisenberg was
going through at this time. So there is there's an
argument to be made that he was trying to preserve
the scientific community in Germany as best he could, because
there were others who were also trying to do that.
(24:35):
Max Planck, for example, was also trying to um to
do that. Although Plank had hoped that the the rise
of the Nazis was just a temporary kind of kerfuffle
and that it wasn't going to balloon into this incredible
conflict that would span the entire globe. He just had
(24:55):
no He had no concept of that actually happening. So
he had to stay and to try and keep the
German departments of mathematics and physics as intact as possible.
So it could be that that's the case, We honestly
don't know. In ninety one, Heisenberg becomes the professor of
physics at the University of Berlin and the director of
(25:17):
the kaiserville Helm Institute for Physics. And in nineteen forty
five Heisenberg is taken prisoner by American troops and is
sent to England. UH. He's freed in nineteen forty six
and returns to Germany and helps rebuild the Institute for
Physics at Guttingen and then UH that eventually becomes the
Max Planck Institute for Physics, which would eventually relocate and
(25:41):
I believe I believe Heisenberg personally renamed the institute them
on Max Plunks. And he would continue to travel and
give lectures about his work, in fact doing so almost
right up to when he died. He died in on
February one, nineteen seventy six after developing cancer, so he
was very much active in the world of lectures and
(26:03):
academia well after the end of World War Two. Yeah,
towards the end of his life he became interested in
plasma physics and a thermonuclear processes. So see, it's uh,
you know, it's certainly one of those interesting timelines. And
in a moment, we're going to really dive into what
his contributions were in the field of quantum mechanics and
(26:25):
give a full explanation or as as full as we
possibly can make it of what the uncertainty principle is
all about, as well as why it's important in technology,
because yes, this does have to do with tech. It's
just going to take us a while to get there. Okay, guys,
I'm not really sure what's about to happen. You could
say I'm uncertain, So let's take a quick break, all right,
(26:55):
So now it's time to dive into quantum mechanics. I
gotta tell you, I'm not really certain about this. I'm
just gonna keep making that joke excellent until it's funny. Um. So, yeah,
he was. Heisenberg had worked in theoretical physics and quantum
mechanics during the early early days of the discipline, and
he was particularly interested in studying the radiation from an atom.
(27:19):
But here's the thing that he was also interested in
seeing what was actually observable, you know, really look at
the atom and see what you could actually see it
because we had all these hypothetical particles in these theoretical particles,
things that that should exist based upon the math involved.
But but but the science at the time was based
on on bombarding these these tiny, tiny, tiny sub atomic
(27:43):
particles with um with things like gamma radiation and then
observing what we could observe, right, And so he began
to differentiate between what you could observe and what you
could not, and then he started to notice things. He
said that, you know, we can't really always assign a
position in space to a specific electron at any given time,
and we can't follow electrons around their orbits. It's it's
(28:06):
not like a planetary orbit that we can watch continuously, right,
It's more like there's an area that an electron could
be in, as opposed to we can specifically point out
that this is where the electron is at any given moment,
or this is the direction it is traveling at any
given moment, and this would start to plant the seed
in his mind for the uncertainty principle. So first he
(28:30):
said that you know, bores postulation that the the the
orbits of electrons are around the nucleus was more or
less correct. You couldn't actually be certain of what those
orbits were because the unobservable nature of these electrons move. Yeah,
there's just no way to assign a figure to this.
You can't say the electron is in uh, this particular
(28:51):
quadrant around the nucleus UM and you couldn't talk about
really the electron's velocity either. Velocity, by the way, is
speed us direction, right, And so he started to say
that instead of using um classic numbers, the kinds of
numbers that we would use to describe human scale physics,
that that we needed to use matrices. Yeah, and a
(29:15):
matrix is essentially an abstract mathematical structure. So this was
almost like talking about probabilities. It's it's kind of fuzzy,
it's not specific, it's not precise. And in fact, that
was Heisenberg's argument, was that precision is something that you
could strive for, but you were never ever going to
get Uh, he kind of arrived at this gradually. So
(29:39):
in ninety he was involved in a bit of a spat,
a debate, if you will, about a theoretical spat actually
was real spat about theory, but it was on. So
you had two sides to this debate. You had Heisenberg
and his his fellow physicists, who I thought of quantum
(30:01):
mechanics in the term of these matrices, these this abstract
mathematic way of describing the position or motion of an electron,
because again he was arguing that you could not define
it in a way that was like it's at x,
y and z coordinates. You could not do that. I
was using the matrix. And there was another set of
(30:22):
scientists who were trying to describe some atomic particles as
as waves the way that we would electromagnetic radiation, unlike
or own Strodinger. Yeah, Schrodinger, Schrodinger, Yeah, he and his
kitty cat. Actually Schroedinger and the cat story is kind
of interesting, just a little side notes. So you've probably
heard of Schrodinger's cat, where Schrodinger was uh, kind of
(30:44):
giving a thought experiment kind of thing to explain how
how this this other form the matrix form of quantum
mechanics is a little weird. The idea that you have
a cat inside a box, and inside that box you
also have a little canister with poisonous gas estenate, and
there's some explosive that has a that that will go
(31:04):
off at some point and I am giving a variation classic. So,
so within half an hour there's a fifty chance that
the explosive inside that canstor has gone off and released
the poisonous gas and little killed the cat. Yes, kitty
is no more one life down, eight to go. There's
(31:24):
also a fifty percent chance that the that the explosion
has not yet happened, and that Kitty is fine but
possibly very bored inside this box. And so the thing
is that because of uh, this this weird quantum effect,
and keep in mind this is really something that only
happens at the quantum level. When you get up to
the macro level that we see this is not actually
(31:48):
the case. But the idea is that the cat is
both alive and dead at the same time, and superposition
that has both states and superposition, and it's only when
you open up the box and observe the cat that
one of those two possibilities becomes true, becomes true, and
the other one just becomes yeah, it goes away, and
that then you have either the live cat or the
(32:10):
dead cat, so that the cat is said to be
alive and debt at the same time until you observe it,
and that's when reality snaps into place and you suddenly
get one of the two results. And it was kind
of a way of saying like this is just, you know,
kind of crazy. It's turned out to be one of
those things we always refer to anyway. So Schroinger's cat
and Heisenberg's and certainty principle both are trying to explain
(32:32):
various weird things about the quantum level. There's another one
that we can touch on also that gets confused with
Heisenberg's and certainty principle, which is the idea that by
observing something you actually affect the outcome. So in other words,
when we're looking at sub atomic particles, simply shining light
onto them affects their movement, because we're talking about photons
(32:55):
impacting subatomic particles, which changes the pathway, which means just
by taking an observation in a measurement, you have changed
what has what was going to happen. So it makes
it even more impossible to predict things based upon the
behaviors of stuff, because just by observing it, you change
what that outcome actually is. Now that's not heisenberg'sun certainty
(33:18):
principle either, but it often gets confused. So we've got
this debate. We've got the wave mechanics debate, and that's
Schrodinger's side, and we've got the matrices debate, and that's
Heisenberg's side. And the debate was not always civil. Uh,
there was there. There was a quote that Heisenberg made
to another physicist, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, which was, the more
(33:41):
I think about the physical portion of Schrodinger's theory, the
more repulsive I find it. What Schrodinger writes about the visualizability. Visualizability, Boy,
that's a hard word. Of his theory is probably not
quite right. In other words, it's crap thick burn. Yeah,
that was a little that was a little rough. So
here's what the difference was between these two. Stroutinger's approach
(34:04):
require less complicated math to explain the relationship of a
sub atomic particles movement and and and it's it's position
around a nucleus example, an electron around the nucleus as
an example, and it furthermore explained some of the things
that Heisenberg's theory couldn't really fully explain. It's sort of
(34:25):
it's sort of pushed them under the rug in a way,
because Heisenberg's approach showed that there were these little quantum
jumps quantum leaps as if yes, exactly, there's quantum leaps
when you cannot quite solve the problem, or you solve
the problem and then you have to leap into the
next body and hopefully your next leap is the one
that takes you home. No, in this case, the quantum
(34:45):
jumps were the fact that you would see electrons behave
in a weird way, like suddenly an electron would behave
as if it had a higher amount of energy than
it normally would, and that was, you know, Heisenberg's approach
showed these well with Schroedinger's approach, because we're talking about
a continuous wave a wave function, it smooths everything out,
(35:07):
so you don't have these jagged, you know, jumps, you
have just a smooth transition um. So the Schroedinger's argument
was that, hey, you know, I've looked at the way
you are calculating this, and I look at the way
I'm calculating this, and it turns out the outcomes are
the same. We're getting the same results, but mine requires
less complicated math and not all this mathematic abstraction that
(35:30):
you are insisting upon. So therefore I'm right and you're wrong,
or at least mine is more eloquent. So you've got
these two parties of physicists getting a little caddy Schroedinger caddy.
Perhaps um, there are alive cats and dead cats. But then, uh,
it's interesting because you started getting into other physicists getting
(35:53):
into the game, including Ernst Pascal Jordan's or Jordan I suppose,
who was a German physicist who attact later joined the
Nazi Party, become part of that movement, in fact enlisted
in the Luftwaffe. Um. And then you had Paul de
Rak who was an English physicist who both created unified
equations that took the wave function approach and the matrices
(36:15):
approach and combine them into what was called a transformation theory,
which is the very basis of quantum mechanics. So again
this is all theoretical, it's essentially trying physicists trying to
figure out how to to apply the same sort of
observation that they had in classical interpretation of physics on
the macro scale to the quantum level, which is the
(36:38):
incredibly tiny scale the atomic or subatomic scale, at which
their rules do not apply. Right. So, but the transformation
theory ended up showing that there was a combination of
both Schroedinger's approach and Heisenberg's approach the sort of wave
particle duality that we know about with quantum mechanics. That's
kind of what was coming out of this discussion. So
instead of them both saying no, I'm right, now, I'm right,
(37:00):
these guys are like, well, actually you're both right. Technically, yeah,
light is a particle and a wave, and it gets boy,
toy doesn't get even more crazy, Like it seems magical
to those of us who are used to classical physics
on that macro scale, because if things on the macro
scale behaved the same way that things in the quantum
(37:20):
scale behaved, it would be like we were living in
Harry Potter World or something right right there, there would
be a lot of a lot of you know, people
suddenly jumping to the left right. Yeah, because you know,
or you can never really be sure where someone was
or how quickly they were moving and and emitting light
when they did it, they'd be half dead and half
alive until you looked at them. Yeah, there's a whole
bunch of things that would be pretty bizarre in our world.
(37:43):
We'll be right back with more of this classic episode
of tech stuff after this quick break. So Heisenberg studied
Jordan and de Rocks papers and found that there were
probably ms whenever he tried to measure the basic physical
variables appearing in the equations. And by physical variables, I
(38:06):
mean an electrons position and its momentum. So that led
Heisenberg to create the famous principle of uncertainty, which he
did in nine seven. We usually call that Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
So here's here's how it breaks down. The more precisely
you determine the position of a sub atomic particle, for example,
an electron around the nucleus, So the more precisely you
(38:27):
determine its position, the less precisely you can know about
the momentum at that moment, and vice versa. So if
you more precisely determine the subotomic particles momentum, the less
precisely you can know its actual position, right um. So specifically,
he was saying that um that running the calculation for this,
(38:48):
for this determination of the position and the momentum um
necessarily contains errors, the product of which physically cannot be
less than the quantum constant h Plancks constant, which is
the smallest unit the quantum of action in an atom. Right.
And so what he's saying here is that it doesn't
matter how advanced your measurement apparatus is. In fact, there
(39:14):
was one point where More criticized Heisenberg's approach because he
said that he was using essentially microscopes that were not
precise enough, and in fact it made an error. And
then Heisenberg got really upset a Bore, and the two
of them had a falling out that lasted about a year,
and then Heisenberg eventually wrote a paper and acknowledge He said,
(39:34):
you know, Bore has criticized this because of such and such,
an acknowledged that in fact there was an error, but
said that ultimately that error was beside the point because
it would not matter how precise that was the fact
remained that the more you would learn about one thing,
the less you could know about the other. That's the
uncertainty or complimentarianism is another way that some people have
said that there's this complementary relationship between the momentum and
(39:58):
the position. So in case you I want to know
what momentum is, that's mass times velocity. Velocity is that
speed and direction, So that's important to know. So on
the human scale, this uncertainty is completely negligible. There's you
might as well just throw it out the window because
on our scale it just doesn't that it doesn't factor
into it. It's such a tiny thing. But when you
look at the smaller scales, this tiny tiny thing becomes
(40:20):
huge because you're looking at things on an incredibly small scale.
And because we can't know but with precision both a
sub atomics particles, a position and its momentum, we cannot
really make predictions about what's going to happen in the future.
And in fact, uh this is where Heisenberg says causality
becomes a problem because if you cannot determine that subatomic
(40:41):
particles position and momentum, you cannot actually know what's going
to happen next. So if you were to expand this out,
now this is this is to the absurd, But if
you were to expand this out, you could say that
you cannot for certain know that by doing a certain action,
a particular effect is going to follow. That's not really
the case with classical physics again, because we're talking about
the macro scale, but on the qualm scale, that's the
(41:03):
case we cannot really know what will happen from one
moment to the next because we can't know enough about
all the factors to make that determination, which is which
is kind of wonderful and kind of terrifying right simultaneously,
and though it's a cat in a box yep. And
and then this also ties into that observation problem, right
because if we even if we observe the phenomenon, then
(41:23):
we're affecting, we're changing the phenomens. We're making it even
more impossible to determine what the effect is going to be.
The cause and effect at the scale is something that
becomes purely theoretical, because as soon as you try and
apply practical approaches to it, it all breaks down. And
we promise this really does relate directly to technology, we're
getting there. So we then show that light can be
(41:44):
interpreted as both wave functions and as a particle. That's
with Boor and Heisenberg together working, they were able to
kind of come to this conclusion. And as soon as
you decide how to observe a particular experiment, that interpretation
become is true and the other interpretation collapses. So, in
other words, if you're looking at light as a wave,
you see it as a wave. If you look at
(42:05):
light as a particle, you see it as a particle,
and the other half of that interpretation goes away, which
is insane. They were talking about it about how how
you observe the experiment, we disturb untouched nature and we
become limited and learning about nature as it really is.
In other words, we have a very narrow view into
(42:26):
what reality is, and once we focus that view on something,
we cannot know everything else that's outside of that view.
So imagine that you have a telescope and you are
using that telescope to look at something that's on the
distant horizon, and you can see that you can see
the thing that's on the horizon, but everything else has
(42:46):
faded away. It's like all of that's just gone. That's
kind of what the sort of an analogy as to
what he was saying here, which is disturbing to think
about in a way, but that's how reality works, so
you gotta come of deal with it um. So Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle in Stringer's wave functions become the basis of
the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. And the reason why
(43:11):
we even did this podcast besides the fact that I
think someone actually asked us to and Lauren's going to
look that up, but the reason why we're doing this
is because heisenberg'suncertainty principle plays into the way that we
use electronics today, because now we're working with electronics that
have components that are on this tiny, tiny skin at
(43:32):
least the nano scale, which is one one factor up
from atomic but far away. The flow of electrons is
critical for modern absolutely and while we're making these tiny
transistors or transistor elements that are part of these integrated circuits,
you know, the whole purpose of transistors is to guide
the flow of electrons, to allow them to pass or
to not allow them to pass through a circuit. Well,
(43:54):
if you make the gates really thin. Heisenberg's and certainty
principle tells us that there is a kind of a
zone in which you might find an electron, and because
of the uncertainty about the electron's momentum or energy, sometimes
that electron can jump up an energy level because of
(44:14):
our uncertainty, we we you know, it just will pop
up an energy level and then pop back down, which
means they can be found in a slightly larger zone
than you would not necessarily expect based upon its actual
energy level, which can be problematic when when you've got
these incredibly thin gates that are supposed to be keeping
an electrons on one side, right, that that zone might
(44:35):
extend beyond the far side of that gate. And if
the zone extends beyond the far side of the gate,
that means that it's possible for an electron to appear
on the other side of the gate without having actually
passed through that circuit, which means called electron tunneling. And
since it's possible, it happens, which which means that, yeah,
(44:55):
unless we figure out ways of getting around these you know,
these these fundamental quantum phenomena that we you know, there's
a point where you cannot make the components any smaller
because the electrons just won't play ball. They're just gonna
go every way that the fundamental quantum traffic laws, as
you put it in our exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it means
(45:16):
that that you're you're gonna get errors in your various
chips because they will not be allowing the or or
preventing the electrons from flowing the way they're supposed to,
because the electrons are just going to be able to
tunnel right through when when those uh, those energy levels
bump up uncertainly. It's bizarre, it's so weird to think
about um. But engineers have found ways of working around that,
(45:39):
using different materials that uh that that minimize this so
that they can continue to make things smaller and smaller.
But we will reach a point when that is just
not going to be the way that chips will be
designed anymore. Either will will plateau and we won't be
able to make chips with smaller components, or will find
a different means of useing sub atomic particles to process information,
(46:03):
and we'll move away from electron based chips, which is
hard to consider. It's really weird to think about. Yeah,
that's not that that that is beyond my entire brain
right now. Yeah, I'm actually starting to feel a nosebleed
coming on because I'm a I'm an English literature major.
Al Right, well, let's let's bring this back to something,
to something a little bit more peaceful and serene. I
(46:24):
have I have a quote from Heisenberg via via pds um.
He once said natural science does not simply describe and
explain nature. It's part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
It describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.
That's pretty cool, which I thought was nice. I thought
that that was a much less nosebleedy way of saying
(46:44):
that that we mess stuff up scientifically. And also it
also is less uh nasty than his note to U
or note about Shrodinger. Right. So um oh, I found
the name of the person who requested this via Facebook.
This was from listener Peter. So Peter asked us about this,
and I hope that we were able to answer your
(47:05):
questions to uh your satisfaction. It was certainly to the
best of our ability, keeping in mind that neither of
us are theoretical physicists. Not by a long show mathematicians
for that matter. Uh fascinating subject, and there are a
lot of books out there that are really really good
about explaining Heisenberg's role and also the contributions of his contemporaries,
(47:26):
everyone from Einstein to Somerville, to Schroedinger to to all
all the great physicists of the nineteen twenties and thirties
who have really made modern technology possible through their discoveries.
And that wraps up another classic episode of tech Stuff.
I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any
(47:46):
suggestions for future topics, reach out to me. You can
get in touch on Twitter or on Facebook. The handle
at both of those is tech Stuff hs W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(48:10):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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