How to Use uncertainty principle in a Sentence

uncertainty principle

noun
  • The point about the uncertainty principle is one that deserves some further study.
    — The Editors, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2010
  • Clarke does, however, note that not all ‘quantum brain’ theories are based around the uncertainty principle.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 22 Dec. 2013
  • The models couldn’t keep the uncertainty principle intact.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 16 Aug. 2025
  • But the uncertainty principle works for other quantities, too.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 20 Oct. 2017
  • To be clear, squeezing doesn’t violate the uncertainty principle.
    — Sophia Chen, WIRED, 20 June 2019
  • This careful trade-off preserved the uncertainty principle while also capturing the way energy leaks out of the system.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 16 Aug. 2025
  • But because of the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, the state of a quantum field is never certain, so its energy can never be exactly zero.
    — Quanta Magazine, 12 Mar. 2018
  • This same technique of acquiring the minimum amount of information needed for a measurement seemed to offer a way around the uncertainty principle.
    — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 6 Aug. 2014
  • This is also an unusually literate movie, one that cites Heisenberg’s own famous uncertainty principle the better to bring it to bear on the scenario itself.
    — Robert Rodat, New York Times, 21 June 2018
  • Bending the uncertainty principle has proven necessary as physicists probe subtler phenomena.
    — Sophia Chen, WIRED, 20 June 2019
  • The uncertainty principle forbids any quantum system from settling down into a perfectly quiet state of exactly zero energy.
    — Tara C. Smith, Quanta Magazine, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Batson posed a follow-up question about the uncertainty principle, politely requesting a reply without unwonted nonsense about bananas.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • In a sense, merely looking at a quantum system unavoidably disturbs it, a manifestation of Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle.
    — Wired, 6 Oct. 2019
  • For instance, Einstein refused to believe that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle—which limits how much can be known about a particle's position and speed—was fundamental.
    — Marc-Olivier Renou, Scientific American, 13 Mar. 2023
  • Four hundred years on, Erwin Schrödinger (of the cat in a box which is both dead and alive) and Werner Heisenberg (of the uncertainty principle), among others, tried to explain their findings about quantum physics.
    — Stephanie Burt, The New Yorker, 31 Oct. 2022
  • Inside Virgo, the uncertainty principle manifests as quantum noise, obscuring the gravitational wave signal.
    — WIRED, 9 Jan. 2023
  • It’s also used to calculate the distribution of energies for a blackbody (an object that gives off light due only to its temperature), and for the uncertainty principle that gives a relation between measurements of position and momentum.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 8 Oct. 2021
  • Observation, in this case, is a quantum mechanics phenomenon embodied by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 22 June 2022
  • The uncertainty principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, is a consequence of the fuzziness of the universe at microscopic scales.
    — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 6 Aug. 2014
  • Nearly a century after Werner Heisenberg proposed the uncertainty principle, this breakthrough puts the famous concept into direct, real-time observation.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 6 Oct. 2025
  • But the uncertainty principle, formulated by German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s, states that there is a fundamental limit to how well the position and momentum of an object such as a drum can be known.
    — Daniel Garisto, Scientific American, 6 May 2021
  • Werner Heisenberg won the 1932 Nobel Prize for helping to found the field of quantum mechanics and developing foundational ideas like the Copenhagen interpretation and the uncertainty principle.
    — Lee Phillips, Ars Technica, 10 Oct. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'uncertainty principle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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