I struggled with it until I thought that these things aren't particles or waves in the way that we think of them. They don't flip back and forth. They are one t

I struggled with it until I thought that these things aren't particles or waves in the way that we think of them. They don't flip back and forth. They are one thing that is simultaneously both a particle and a wave and they are like that all the time. They're not particles and waves. They're particle-waves, or wave-particles. It's neither a wave nor a particle and neither is it both things simultaneously. Instead, it shares many properties of both. It is it's own thing. We don't have a better word or description for it because there isn't a good analogy in the normal macroscopic physical world we're used to. It appears contradictory to us only because we don't have a good analogy for it. However, we do understand that things can be two things at once. Say I take an metal marble that has been painted blue. We have an object with two distinct properties. Now we can say that the marble is metal, and we can test it is by feeling it or using a magnet. And we can say that it's blue, and we can test that it's blue by shining a light on it and measuring the light that comes off of it. But our marble doesn't stop being blue just because we're using a magnet, and it doesn't stop being metal just because we're shining a light on it. However, we can't tell that it's blue by using a magnet, and we can't shine a light to tell if it's metal. Indeed, we can even think of more properties. A marble is spherical, but we could also have a blue metal cube. The universe isn't tricking us or making something switch between two states of being. Our tests are just limited. When we get to a subatomic level, our tests and interactions are so limited that you can't test for more than one property at a time because every test interferes with what we're testing. You have to pick the one you want to look at. That's where the uncertainly principle comes in. As far as I'm aware, the reason that we can't develop any test that can break the uncertainty principle is because everything we could potentially test with is, itself, a part of the wave-particle system. Since experimentation requires measurement (of course), and every measurement requires interaction (it does), and every interaction in the universe is either wave-like or particle-like and it's never both (they are, AFAIK), then no matter how smart we build our system we can't measure for both at once because everything we can build is inherently limited to this restriction because everything is in this system. It's like baking a cake. Say you want to know two things: Is the oven temperature right, and is the cake completely cooked through? If you want to know if the cake is cooked, you'll have to open the oven and stick a tester into the cake. But, if you open the oven, you've let all the heat out. You can't do both at the same time, because one test interferes with the other. Even if you check the temperature and then test the cake, you've still changed the system. This is not a perfect analogy, of course, but it kind of gets you thinking along the right lines. I'm no expert in this field, however, and I'm sure someone will be along to correct my misconceptions.