INDETERMINACY RELATION: The Copenhague Interpretation
Charles François (2004). INDETERMINACY RELATION: The Copenhague Interpretation, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 1634.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1634 ▶ |
| Object type | Discipline oriented |
F. SUPPE summarizes it as follows:
- “Exploiting the fact that microscopic particles sometimes act like corpuscles and sometimes like waves, the HEISENBERG indeterminacy relation is interpreted as showing the impossibility of measuring a physical quantity without causing a disturbance. Any attempt to improve the measurement of a parameter which characterizes a system will have the inevitable result of disturbing the value of another parameter of the system: unlike the macroscopic level, on the microscopic level these disturbances will be non-negligible; thus it is impossible to find the position and velocity of a subatomic particle at one moment with complete accuracy” (1978, p.182).
Indeed, at the macroscopic level, velocity is measured by comparing two or more succesive positions, which implies that in these cases measurement of position and velocity, while accurate, cannot be really simultaneous. The real difference with microscopic particles is that here the system's identity is not significantly affected.