As far as all the history that led up to it, no, not really. I do know it comes from the time (1925-1927) when Schrödinger had introduced wave mechanics in contrast to the matrix mechanics Heisenberg introduced (these were later shown to be mathematically equivalent). The physics community was flocking to the Schrödinger version because wave mechanics was easier to visualize. Heisenberg wanted a way to make his matrix mechanics more visual. I believe in discussions with Dirac the problem of position vs momentum popped out of the math, and Heisenberg struggled to understand that (because it doesn't work that way classically, of course).
The HUP is fundamentally based on Fourier transforms because the position and momentum information encoded in the wave function use orthogonal basis vectors. It's not mathematically possible to fully resolve one without losing the other.
I don't know how much that helps answer your question, though.
I can highly recommend @Jim Baggott’s book, Quantum Cookbook. It goes through the mathematical derivations of all the key QM formulas. (If I ever fully master it, I’ll consider myself as having “arrived”.)
Do you know where the principle comes from? As in, how was it derived/discovered?
As far as all the history that led up to it, no, not really. I do know it comes from the time (1925-1927) when Schrödinger had introduced wave mechanics in contrast to the matrix mechanics Heisenberg introduced (these were later shown to be mathematically equivalent). The physics community was flocking to the Schrödinger version because wave mechanics was easier to visualize. Heisenberg wanted a way to make his matrix mechanics more visual. I believe in discussions with Dirac the problem of position vs momentum popped out of the math, and Heisenberg struggled to understand that (because it doesn't work that way classically, of course).
The HUP is fundamentally based on Fourier transforms because the position and momentum information encoded in the wave function use orthogonal basis vectors. It's not mathematically possible to fully resolve one without losing the other.
I don't know how much that helps answer your question, though.
Thank you! That's a really helpful answer. I think I'm going to have to dig into the maths of it at some point
I can highly recommend @Jim Baggott’s book, Quantum Cookbook. It goes through the mathematical derivations of all the key QM formulas. (If I ever fully master it, I’ll consider myself as having “arrived”.)
👍