Educational Media Reviews Online

This involving documentary presents a postdoctoral physics student’s attempt to measure heat flow at a quantum level. If successful, the experiment is a small step on the path to quantum computing. Keith Schwab’s three years of checking and rechecking results, and evaluating intermediate failures ends successfully.

Tight interviews with Schwab, his advisors at Berkeley and Caltech, and fellow graduate students are honest and forthright. All freely express doubts, professional criticism and fear of failure. Their insight into what it takes to succeed is as important to the film's success as the actual experiment. The film also captures the elegance of pure science and satisfaction of carrying a project through to completion. Schwab accurately compares designing his experimental heat-conducting sample to creating a work of art. Unfortunately, the film is somewhat weakened by Schwab’s reality-television style confessional monologues about his failed marriage. The filmmakers obviously wanted to add drama by depicting the project’s pressures on the participants’ personal lives. These forced scenes cheapen an otherwise honest and compelling effort.

The filmmakers do well on an obviously tight budget. Opening footage of Schwab quietly connecting his sample to the refrigerator help establish the theme of scientist as artist. Editing is crisp and clean. Cutting between Schwab’s initial failures in the lab and his participation in a shooting competition nicely portrays his tension and frustration.

The Uncertainty Principle would make an interesting addition to a career resources collection for students considering advanced degrees in the sciences, and also a general undergraduate science collection.