Name: Demystifying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Duration: 10 min
Description: Fermilab's Don Lincoln traces the principle to the wave nature of matter and the link between wavelength and momentum, with Fourier pictures of square and bell-shaped pulses. A good second pass on Parts 2 and 3, and on this chapter's central claim that the limit lives in the wave, not in the instruments.

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08Unit 2 · Wave–Particle DualityHeisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

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10 videos · 3 h 45 min

Lecture · Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology
Listening to the Universe above the quantum din | Nergis Mavalvala (MIT School of Science)
Munich Center for Quantum Science & Technology · Nergis Mavalvala
Nergis Mavalvala, dean of MIT's School of Science and a member of the LIGO team, at the MCQST Colloquium in July 2025, on the quantum technologies that let LIGO measure below an attometre. Listen for the long version of this section's squeezed-light paragraph: zero-point fluctuations of light set a noise floor, and squeezing reshapes that noise without beating the bound.
- Ch 08
Explainer · Perimeter
Uncertainty in Quantum Mechanics | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Katie Mack · 2023
A short episode from Perimeter Institute's Quantum 101 series with Katie Mack. Watch it alongside Chapter 8.
- Ch 08
Lecture · Perimeter
Nima Arkani-Hamed Public Lecture: Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime in the 21st Century
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Nima Arkani-Hamed · 2014
One of the most original theorists working today on why quantum mechanics and gravity together suggest that spacetime itself may not be fundamental. Delivered at Perimeter Institute in November 2014; demanding in places, exhilarating throughout.
- Ch 08
- Ch 25
Series · Perimeter
Quantum 101
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Katie Mack · 2023
Ten five-minute episodes hosted by the cosmologist Katie Mack: duality, quantization, uncertainty, superposition, entanglement, probability, tunnelling and quantum computing. The friendliest possible on-ramp, and a quick refresher before any chapter.
- Ch 01
- Ch 03
- and 8 more chapters
Explainer · YouTube
What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? - Chad Orzel
TED-Ed
Chad Orzel's animated TED-Ed lesson sets up the whole session in under five minutes: you can never pin down an object's exact position and exact speed together, because everything behaves as both a particle and a wave. Watch for the wave argument at its heart, which Parts 2 and 3 turn into precise mathematics.
- Ch 08
Explainer · YouTube
The more general uncertainty principle, regarding Fourier transforms
3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson shows that the uncertainty principle is a general fact about Fourier transforms long before it is a fact about particles: a brief sound has no crisp pitch, and Doppler radar must trade sharp range against sharp speed. The quantum chapter starts at about 10:24. Watch it beside Part 3 and the lab's wave builder.
- Ch 08
Demo · YouTube
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Explained
Veritasium
Section 1's single slit in four minutes: a laser shone through a slit that is made narrower and narrower. Watch what the spot on the screen does as the slit closes, and connect it to slit width times sideways momentum spread ≈ h. The description calls the principle a limit on measuring; section 2 sharpens that into a property of the state.
- Ch 08
Lecture · MIT
Defining uncertainty
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
A ten-minute segment of MIT 8.04 (Spring 2016) that defines the Δ precisely: the standard deviation of an observable in a given state, built from expectation values. It is this section's ensemble definition on the blackboard, a property of the state rather than of any one blurry measurement.
- Ch 08
Explainer · YouTube
The Uncertainty Principle: What Does It Mean, How Does It Work?
Sabine Hossenfelder
The jump lands on her chapter 'Is Uncertainty All About Waves?', the question this section answers with Fourier's bargain; 'What's Quantum About It?' (9:02) then asks what quantum mechanics adds. Compare her answer with the lesson's: p = ħk turns a fact about every wave into a fact about momentum. Rewind to 2:00 for what quantum uncertainty means.
- Ch 08
Explainer · YouTube
Heisenberg's Microscope - Sixty Symbols
Sixty Symbols · Michael Merrifield
Professor Michael Merrifield of the University of Nottingham on the tricky business of measuring a particle, the thought experiment at the heart of this section. Watch it with the section's warning in mind: the photon's kick illustrates the bound, it does not cause it. Sixty Symbols continues the story in 'Weak Measurement (cont. from Heisenberg's Microscope)'.
- Ch 08