Werner Heisenberg and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Werner Heisenberg, born in the dawn of the twentieth century became one of its greatest physicists; he is also among its most controversial. While still in his early twenties, he was among the handful of bright, young men who created quantum mechanics, the basic physics of the atom, and he became a leader of nuclear physics and elementary particle research. He is best known for his uncertainty principle, a component of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of the meaning, and uses of quantum mechanics.

Through his successful life, he lived through two lost World Wars, Soviet Revolution, military occupation, two republics, political unrest, and Hitler's Third Reich. He was not a Nazi, and like most scientists of his day he tried not to become involved in politics. He played a prominent role in German nuclear testing during the World War II era. At age twenty-five he received a full professorship and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 at the age of thirty-two. He climbed quickly to the top of his field beginning at the University of Munich when his interest in theoretical physics was sp

On March 22, 1927, Heisenberg submitted a paper to the "Zeitschrift fur Physik" entitled "On the perceptual content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics" This twenty-seven page paper forwarded from Copenhagen contained Heisenberg's most famous and far-ranging achievement in physics, his formulation of the uncertainty or indeterminacy principle in quantum mechanics. This uncertainty principle formed a fundamental component of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The other two portions were Bohr's complementary principle and Born's statistical interpretation of Schrodinger's wave function. The Copenhagen Interpretation was an explanation of the uses and limitations of the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics the fundamentally altered our understanding of nature and our relationship to it. This was the most controversial and profound transformation in physics that has not been equaled since. Heisenberg compared this to how Newtonian mechanics had to be replaced by a new relativistic mechanics such as how the effects of Einstein's theory of relativity transformed our notions of space and time under certain conditions, which are high speeds, and enormous expanses of space and time. Heisenberg continued how a similar transformation is required in the realm of small masses and short distances such as the order of atoms and electrons. It was impossible to observe the individual workings of atoms, only the external workings of large numbers of atoms. Prior to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle it was common belief that it was able to describe the electron's motion by noting its position and velocity at any given moment. In his essay, Heisenberg argued this belief and stated that this concept would not work; the previous belief would only be accurate if the object were macroscopic and in the 'viewable' world. When objects are sill viewable and measurable, Newtonian physics still applies, but when objects become so minute they are not able to be measured with an accurateness. It is impossible for the physicists to know any more than it is possible for them to measure. This is his explanation for this concept, "If one seeks to measure the exact position of an electron, one could use a microscope of very high resolving power, which would require the illumination of the electron with the light of very short wavelengths.

In the Summer of 1920 Werner Heisenberg graduated Munich's Maximiliams-Gymnasium and entered the University of Munich the following Fall. Not yet knowing which field of study he wished to commit to, his father arranged an appointment for Werner with Ferdinand von Lindemann, the professor of mathematics at the University of Munich. When he arrived for the appointment he saw the older professor sitting in his dimly lit office with his poodle hiding under his desk. When Heisenberg began to speak, the dog started to bark. For the duration of the entire conversation, the dog kept yapping. In the brief conversation Lindemann only asked a few questions of Heisenberg, one of which was what books he had been reading. Heisenberg responded with Weyl's Space, Time and Matter, through the noise of the dog Lindemann closed the conversation with, "In that case you are completely lost in mathematics." Rejected by Lindemann, Werner's father decided that he should try his hand in theoretical physics. In his first meeting with Sommerfeld, he also asked Heisenberg which books he had recently been reading. Werner replied with the same answer but Sommerfeld's response was completely different, saying, "You are too demanding... You can't possibly start with the most difficult part and hope that the rest will automatically fall into your lap."

This first equation expresses the relationship when the position q, and the velocity p are measured simultaneously. The error in the precision of p and q are expressed as Dp and Dq at a given instant. The product of these uncertainties have to be at least equal to h/2p

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Approximate Word count = 4427
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)