Music- The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is one of a handful of ideas from quantum physics to have expanded into general pop culture. It says that you can never simultaneously know the exact position and exact speed of an object. This principle shows up as a metaphor in everything from literary criticism to sports commentary. Uncertainty is often explained as a result of measurement, where the act of measuring an object's position changes its speed, or vice versa. However, the real origin of the uncertainty principle is much deeper and more amazing. The uncertainty principle exists because everything in the universe behaves like both a particle and a wave at the same time in quantum mechanics. The exact position and exact speed of an object have no meaning. To understand this, we need to think about what it means to behave like a particle or a wave. Particles, by definition, exist in a single place at any instant in time. We can represent this by a graph showing the probability of finding the object at a particular place, which looks like a spike at one specific position and zero everywhere else. On the other hand, waves are disturbances that spread out in space like ripples covering the surface of a pond. We can clearly identify features of the wave pattern as a whole, most importantly its wavelength, which is the distance between two neighboring peaks or valleys. But we can't assign it a single position. It has a good probability of being in lots of different places. Wavelength is essential for quantum physics because an object's wavelength is related to its momentum (mass times velocity). A fast-moving object has lots of momentum, which corresponds to a very short wavelength. Even a heavy object has lots of momentum, even if it's not moving very fast,...