For almost 100 years, scientist have been telling us layman (and women) that one of the certainties of our lives rest in the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle – the idea that we cannot observe speed of a particle without affecting its course, and we cannot observe the course of a particle without affecting its speed.
No matter how certain scientist are about of this principle, it certainly didn't prove itself to the five of us standing at a street corner today. We all watched as a woman, chatting merrily on her cell phone, drove her car towards our intersection. As we watched the course of her car barreling down the roadway, her speed never changed. As we made repeated notes of her speed, her path never veered the slightest ... until she suddenly came to a disastrous stop. Not because of Heisenberg and our observational powers, but because of simpler physics - that of another car already occupying the space in front of the glowing red traffic light.
Maybe that's why this uncertainty principle works so well for scientists: particles never travel while holding tiny cell phones to their subatomic ears. Obviously, cell phone companies won't sell phone services to this tiny particles.
Why? When was the last time you heard of the phone company sending anyone a small bill? I think we can be certain of that one.
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