Solved cryptogram
The uncertainty principle is not about disturbing a thing by measuring it. It is deeper.
Physics Facts, sourced to HyperPhysics, Georgia State University.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 72 letters over 18 different ones, graded medium.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
The usual story, that looking at a particle requires hitting it with light and knocking it off course, gives the right flavor and the wrong reason. A particle simply does not possess a sharp position and a sharp momentum at the same time, in the way a musical note cannot be both instantaneous and of a definite pitch. Build a shorter pulse and it necessarily contains a wider spread of frequencies. It is a property of waves, and matter behaves as one.
The claim comes from HyperPhysics, Georgia State University.
- SourceHyperPhysics, Georgia State University
- CollectionPhysics Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length72 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- HyperPhysics, Georgia State Universitymedium, 69 letters
- HyperPhysics, Georgia State Universityhard, 76 letters
- HyperPhysics, Georgia State Universitymedium, 76 letters
- OpenStax, Rice Universitymedium, 71 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- NISTmedium, 74 letters
- NASA Scientific Visualization Studiomedium, 68 letters
- HyperPhysics, Georgia State Universitymedium, 76 letters
- NASA Glenn Research Centermedium, 69 letters