when I was a kid I loved science but I

felt as though there was no point in

becoming a scientists everything was

already invented everything we needed to

know had already been discovered great I

mean we had equations to describe all

kinds of things pendulums Rockets cars

you name it we were building massive

things flying very heavy planes the only

thing else to achieve was to venture

further into space so I wanted to be an

astronaut then I realized okay but maybe

there is a point in becoming a scientist

every day I learned some new phenomenon

in physics regardless of whether I truly

understood it or not I went to bed with

the reassurance that this was all there

was and it governed the world we lived

in pretty well if the math didn't work

it's because I did something wrong and

most of the time I did everything was

new and I picked it up pretty fast but

of course as you grow older you realized

there are more and more things that we

still don't know bottom line is we don't

know a lot of things this idea of not

knowing however takes a whole new

meaning it's quantum mechanics

but first let us describe what it means

for a theory to work and how science is

traditionally done the scientific method

is real yes they actually use it

scientists observe something then they

try to hypothesize what might be causing

things to happen the way they are in the

case of physics they try and come up

with equations that describe the

behavior they're observing an equation

is then tested to see how well the

theoretical model replicates reality the

more closely it approximates reality the

better the theory but notice here that I

said approximates you see when it comes

to physics theories approximate reality

to varying degrees some are extremely

accurate others not so much

for example gases are pretty complicated

they're composed of billions of

energetic gas molecules that are

constantly colliding and interacting

with each other because of this a real

gas is extremely hard to determine

so instead people created the concept of

an ideal gas and short their

approximations they've been the rules a

bit and get as close as possible to the

exact value no gas is exactly ideal but

the concept of an ideal gas is an

extremely useful approximation for most

situations for temperatures near room

temperature and pressures near

atmospheric pressure so under normal

circumstances most of the gases we care

about are almost perfectly ideal however

for situations that aren't normal a bit

more worked as required some rules work

really well while on scales that we deal

with every day but also tweak the

settings a bit to different

circumstances our Wolves begin to break

there's the same and it goes all models

are wrong but some are useful and

honestly I kind of agree with it over

the past few million years humans have

been impressively wrong about most

things but it's ok

models aren't perfect but some are

better than others in the late 19th

century scientists had another such a

behavior model the Sun is bright like

painfully bright in the sky it's a

glowing white ball of fusion but as you

know white isn't just white it

represents a small sliver of radiation

called the visible spectrum and is

composed of every color you've ever seen

no humans and most things that aren't

5,500 degrees Celsius in Italy - but we

can't really see it with our own eyes

this is where we entered the infrared

and ultraviolet scales scientists wanted

to know why these colors showed and if

we could predict what colors would emit

based on the heat of an object this

sounds like a pretty easy experiment all

objects either emit absorb or reflect

light but they wanted an object that

didn't reflect anything something that

would absorb all light and only show

it's radiation a blackbody but like I

just said all objects emit absorb or

reflect light so a true black body just

doesn't exist in nature notice how I

said a true blackbody for all intents

and purposes the Sun earth and other

stars and planets are considered black

bodies remember models aren't perfect

now considering that these objects

absorb all light they should have an

infinite amount of radiation to reflect

right well when they applied their

classical mechanics physics that govern

the world at the time the approximation

was so poor that in fact the experiment

ended up being dubbed as the ultraviolet

catastrophe you can't have an object

with an infinite amount of energy like

that it violates the conservation of

energy classical physics it seemed was

catastrophic ly off enter max plunk

plunk determined that the missing link

preventing the blackbody radiation from

being modelled correctly was the

assumption that energy could be of any

amount again if energy could be any

amount then theoretically you could

input an infinite value and come back

with the solution to model it correctly

Blanc suggested the use of a packet of

energy instead of continuous energy

being sent it's neatly packaged and sent

in finite amounts and thus Planck's

constant and the idea of quantization

was discovered a fundamental piece in

the foundation of quantum mechanics for

the first time scientists understood the

energy states are discrete and not

continuous as previously thought

which is weird in the quantum world you

play by certain rules rules that often

seem very very different from what we're

used to it makes all of quantum

mechanics rather unintuitive and

confusing subject matter and while there

is merit to that accusation we must also

remember that much like every other

branch of science quantum mechanics also

has its humble beginnings rooted in some

very simple ideas so what are those

simple ideas and where does that on

intuitive nough scum from well in my

opinion one of the biggest hurdles in

the understanding of quantum mechanics

is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle it

is something that we just don't

experience in the macroscopic world it

talks about a fundamental natural limit

to which we can measure things the

uncertainty principle states that no

matter how accurately or precisely you

try to measure something you can only do

it so well you can never be absolutely

certain of a particles location and

momentum at the same time it comes down

to observation which is strange yet

again because you would think that our

measurements should be irrespective of

who was looking and who is not but in

the quantum scale that's no longer the

case imagine a pool table there's a cue

ball as well as 15 other striped and

solid color balls but let's not focus on

the game itself when you hit the cue

ball it collides with the other balls on

the table making the cue ball then

bounce off into another direction until

it eventually hits the side of the table

at the quantum level collisions are

happening a bit differently than what

you would expect at the macroscopic

level when photons collide out comes a

bunch of different smaller particles

that didn't initially go in ions muons

electrons and other photons to

understand just how weird this is

imagine a car crash when the cars

collide you'd expect to just see two

destroyed cars with car parts flying

everywhere imagine that once they

collide table and basketball come flying

out on impact there's a complete

transformation into something else it

doesn't make sense obviously also

speaking of electrons they can be in

multiple places at the same time but

once measured a precise location is

revealed it's okay iteratively this

doesn't make sense to me either but

electrons are essentially a cloud around

the nucleus of an atom and only once we

measure them does an actual location

show his face when talking about the

small scale our solutions to problems

make much more sense as probabilities as

opposed to exact values the actual

formula for Heisenberg's uncertainty

principle is this - - you see the

presence of clonks constant the fact

that Planck's constant comes up time and

time again calculating things in the

quanta

Raun really reinforces its significance

in a sense it's self-proving because of

so many different experiments we now

know the value of Planck's constant with

remarkable precision now you may think

that you have very little reason to care

about the uncertainty principle in day

to day life and you'd be kind of right

in thinking that but as we push harder

and harder to the frontiers of

innovation even these tiny amounts of

uncertainty start to matter in fact

humanity's most ambitious goals need the

levels of precision that has never been

seen before the bizarreness of quantum

mechanics doesn't stop there

physicists are not theorizing even more

ideas of the multiverse the idea that

multiple universes exist simultaneously

all differentiated by the smallest

particles known to man now they're going

this way or that way that's just one

particle factor and how many such

particles there are and well things get

too complicated for me to want to

explain the universe and the events that

happened in it all comes down to

probability we've talked about how

quantum mechanics governs the world we

live in but we really only mentioned the

microscopic scale does quantum mechanics

hold up on the macro scale well it kind

of has to if we use classical mechanics

and the values that produces in quantum

mechanics then you should hypothetically

be able to take the same quantum

mechanics and apply them to larger

systems such as planetary orbits and

still we produce accurate results in

order for a new theory to take reign it

should be able to explain some phenomena

that previous theories explained in

short it works this is called neo Bohr's

correspondence principle when he gives

quantum theory even more merit the more

and more we tests and the more and more

examples that fruit quantum mechanics

agrees with classical mechanics helps

let us know for moving in the right

direction the classical mechanics

doesn't get everything right in fact

quantum mechanics changed the way we

view light itself something we encounter

every day we wake up is something that

we're still figuring out even today wave

particle duality is a concept that

changed the fundamentals of nature

forever through the work of Max Planck

Niels Bohr Albert Einstein and a handful

of other quantum physicists it was

discovered that light not only functions

as a wave in the spectrum but also

functions as a particle

at the same time their existence is

intertwine Einstein proposed that light

functions as a particle photons quanta

of light deduced from clocks theories

and it works

Einstein was an amazing physicist but

few people know that he actually won his

Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect

for his involvement in quantum mechanics

it seems as though we must use one

theory and sometimes the other while at

times we may use either we were faced

with a new kind of difficulty we have

two contradictory pictures of reality

separately neither of them fully

explains the phenomenon of light but

together they do our Einstein said that

and he explained it better than I ever

could to different pictures of reality

to different theories and views of the

world come together to explain it all

it's astonishing to think how one

constant could reshape the way we see

reality forever we don't know why it's

this way except for the fact that nature

intended it to be this way constants are

seen throughout nature Planck's constant

the golden ratio pi the list goes on as

with most definitions of physics they

seem to be used in a very specific

manner velocity means something very

specific amplitude means something very

specific the word uncertainty too means

something very specific but it's hard

not to feel that this word uncertainty

it's home differently these days it is

perhaps the most single apt description

of the past few months for the entire

world well I don't expect everyone to be

as fascinated with the uncertainty

principle as myself and most physicists

are I do hope that you could take just

one thing away from it there's always

going to be uncertainty in life despite

our best efforts there's only so much we

can control and all I can seem limiting

it can also be the cause for hope and

excitement uncertainty is after all a

two-way street even genetic exactness

cannot rule out uncertainty genetics are

extremely powerful
but there is even a limit to that power

identical twins could not only have the

same exact genes but can also share the

same environment since the day they're

born and yet they will still grow up to

have different brains and become

different people the detailed structure

of the brain is partly shaped by genes

and environment but the rest is relative

and I used random for the lack of a

better word nothing is completely

understood our bodies included what we

see now is random could be seen as

obvious in 100 years time history as

always is a good example of this the

quantum world is full of random

collisions but oddly enough all this

randomness brings the order that we

observe in the world science isn't

constant by any means but it is

constantly improving I wish I could say

the same for everything else

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you