What is Zero Point Energy?

Transcript

what is Zero Point Energy imagine a spring system that can oscillate back and forth if we put this system in a friction medium it will slowly come to rest now this is something that can only happen in the classical world but never in the quantum world you see Quantum particles follow a very interesting principle known as the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which states that because particles are essentially wave packets you can never really know its position and momentum with absolute accuracy there is always an uncertainty in the position and momentum of a particle that are inversely correlated so if a Quantum particle is strapped in a potential its position has a finite uncertainty that is the width of the potential and as a result its momentum and its kinetic energy are both non-zero no matter what the system is it can never really have zero energy so if you replicate the spring system as a particle in a harmonic oscillator potential this particle will always have a theoretically minimum energy known as the Zero Point Energy despite its name the Zero Point Energy is a minimum non-zero energy therefore even if we take down the temperature to absolute zero the vibrating atoms in a solid will never have zero energy and will never come to rest