318 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? Uncertainty Ifyou know a little of quantum mechanics you might imagine Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle comes to our rescue. Heisenberg’s principle is often misunderstood. People sometimes try to explain it as an experimental problem. If I want to measure the position ofa particle I am going to need to shine a light on it. The photons I use to illuminate the particle will knock it out of position so the act of measurement disturbs the system. This is not the Uncertainty Principle. It is a different but related effect, called the measurement problem. The muddle is really Heisenberg’s own fault. When he tried to produce a layman’s explanation he used the analogy of disturbing the particle with the photon. This is wrong. A photon would not disturb a particle enough to explain the uncertainty we find; particles are fundamentally uncertain even before we measure them. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a quantum property, which means it makes no sense and there is no analogy I can give you to properly explain it! Here is the closest thing I can find. Imagine I am playing a musical note on a guitar. You might want to know two things about it; where exactly is the string and what pitch, or note, am I playing? The problem with these two measurements is they can't be stated at the same time. Pitch is dictated by the rate of oscillation over time: the number of times a string vibrates back and forth per second. Position is the exact location of the string at a given moment in time. IfI state the position precisely this has no pitch because pitch needs a time interval. If I allow a time interval the string will move during that time and it won't be precisely in one place. The best I can say is the string is about two millimeters above the fret board and two-thirds of the way across it. So, I hear you cry, this Uncertainty Principle means our Universe is not deterministic because it is uncertain. Unfortunately, the principle only pr