Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

Loading player...
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German physicist who, at the age of 23 and while still a student, effectively created quantum mechanics for which he later won the Nobel Prize. Werner Heisenberg made this breakthrough in a paper in 1925 when, rather than starting with an idea of where atomic particles were at any one time, he worked backwards from what he observed of atoms and their particles and the light they emitted, doing away with the idea of their continuous orbit of the nucleus and replacing this with equations. This was momentous and from this flowed what’s known as his Uncertainty Principle, the idea that, for example, you can accurately measure the position of an atomic particle or its momentum, but not both.With Fay Dowker
Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College LondonHarry Cliff
Research Fellow in Particle Physics at the University of CambridgeAnd Frank Close
Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Philip Ball, Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different (Vintage, 2018)John Bell, ‘Against 'measurement'’ (Physics World, Vol 3, No 8, 1990)Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2001)David C. Cassidy, Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, And The Bomb (Bellevue Literary Press, 2010) Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (first published 1958; Penguin Classics, 2000)Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics (Penguin, 2022)
28 Mar 2024 English United Kingdom Religion & Spirituality

Other recent episodes

The Battle of Valmy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most consequential battles of recent centuries. On 20th September 1792 at Valmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the army of the French Revolution faced Prussians, Austrians and French royalists heading for Paris to free Louis XVI and restore his power…
13 Feb 47 min

Slime Moulds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and…
30 Jan 55 min

Vase-mania

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss eighteenth century 'vase-mania'. In the second half of the century, inspired by archaeological discoveries, the Grand Tour and the founding of the British Museum, parts of the British public developed a huge enthusiasm for vases modelled on the ancient versions recently dug up in Greece…
23 Jan 59 min

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast…
16 Jan 59 min

The Habitability of Planets

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little…
9 Jan 55 min