Copenhagen In Robert King's A Play Of Uncertain Ideas

Mark Frayn’s Copenhagen takes us on an historical sleuth adventure that is performed by the ghosts of Danish physicist Niels Bohr, his colleague and “adopted son” Werner Heisenberg, and Bohr’s wife Margrethe. Heisenberg was an overall boyish companion of Bohr who would go on long walks and talk physics to. However, the mystery is when Heisenberg visited the Bohrs in Copenhagen in 1941. The play explores the meeting and discusses different topics, such as building atomic bombs, escaping Nazi rule, and physics. It is Heisenberg who addresses this mystery. “Everyone understands uncertainty. Or thinks he does. No one understands my trip to Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers…The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become.” (Frayn 4) This is an interesting approach of how Frayn uses Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as a way of introducing the idea that the more accurate information a person finds, …show more content…
” In this quotation, King defines Heisenberg’s uncertainly principle and acknowledges that Frayn used Heisenberg’s principle while writing Copenhagen and shows evidence of the principle being stated and used in the play via actual character