Complementarity, Principle of

Complementarity, Principle of

 

a principle formulated by N. Bohr that played an important role in the formulation of quantum mechanics. According to the principle, the obtaining of experimental data on certain physical quantities describing microobjects (for example, atoms and electrons) produces changes in quantities complementary to them. The coordinate and momentum of a particle, for example, are two such mutually complementary quantities. The principle of complementarity corresponds to the uncertainty principle, the mathematical expression of which is the uncertainty relation.