Quantum mechanics is weird, right?
量子力学很奇怪,对吧?
But did you know that some of its supposed peculiarities are not unique to quantum physics but are just properties of waves in general?
但是你知道吗,它的一些所谓的特性并不是量子物理所独有的,而是一般的波的特性。
Take the uncertainty principle - it says that the better we know where a particle is, the less we know about how fast it's going.
以测不准原理为例,该原理表示,我们越了解一个粒子的位置,我们就越不知道它的速度。
There's a limit to how much we can know!
我们所能知道的是有限的!
But this isn't just quantum weirdness - it happens all the time with normal everyday waves!
但这不仅仅是量子古怪——它每时每刻都在正常的日常波动中发生!
Remember that the frequency of a wave is how close the wave crests are to each other -
请记住,波的频率是指波峰之间的距离,
a low frequency wave doesn't have nearly as much oomph as a high frequency one!
低频波的魅力远不如高频波!
And the position of a wave is… well, where the wave is… mostly. So where exactly is a wave?
波的位置是,嗯,波的在哪里。那么波到底在哪里呢?
It's spread out everywhere, right? Ok, but for a wave pulse it's pretty easy to see where the wave is.
无处不在,对吧?但对于波脉冲来说,很容易看出波的位置。
So now that we know where the pulse is, what's it's frequency?
现在我们知道了脉冲的位置,那么它的频率是多少?
Well, a localized pulse doesn't really "wave", so we can't measure the frequency of its crests!
一个局部的脉冲并不是真正的“波”,所以我们不能测量它波峰的频率!
And that's the uncertainty principle in a nutshell -
这就是测不准原理——
you can either know where a wave is or where it's going, but not both at the same time!
你既可以知道波在哪里,也可以知道它要去哪里,但不能同时两者皆知!