The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to locating this cache.  This principle was introduced in 1927, by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg. It states that the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.  For you, this means you can’t find the cache at the posted coordinates because its momentum, which is the product of its mass and velocity, is precisely known to be zero.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Werner Heisenberg, he was the lead scientist working on Hitler’s nuclear weapons project during World War II.  At the time, Germany led most studies in nuclear fission, which was discovered in December of 1938 by German chemist Otto Hahn, while radiation detection instrumentation was invented by Hans Geiger and Walther Müller.  Nuclear fission was explained theoretically in January 1939 by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, leading to the thoughts of weaponizing the process. Fortunately for the world, many German scientist were Jewish and they left Germany and other fascists countries when they saw the Nazis take power, bringing some insight to the United States on nuclear activities within the evil Reich.  Thank you Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller! 

Nuclear fission is the process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts.  When the atom splits, it transmutes from a heavy atom, such as uranium, into two smaller and very radioactive atoms, such as barium and krypton (Superman beware!), while releasing radiation in the form of gamma rays, neutrons, beta particles, and/or alpha particles. The two smaller atoms (known as fission fragments in reactors, fallout from nuclear weapon detonation, or elements on the periodic table by chemists) are new elements that have a lot of kinetic energy (they move) while the heavy atom is destroyed. 

As you probably know, temperature is a measurement reflective of the motion of the microscopic particles all around us. The kinetic energy of the fission fragments contributes most of the heat energy used in nuclear reactors for electrical power generation, referred to as thermal power in units of megawatts, along with the lesser quantity of energy from radiation. Much of that energy is wasted in the process. Nothing but un-split atoms are wasted in a weapon. The amount of split atoms (therefore, the amount of energy released) in a weapon is referred to as its yield. Weapon units of measure are in kilotons or megatons, relating it to the quantity of TNT explosive power.

Here’s how it works using everyday examples for illustration.

An atom is like the solar system, it has a center, called a nucleus, and layers of orbiting electrons referred to as an electron cloud.  The nucleus is comprised of positively charged protons and neutrons; neutrons have no charge.  The orbiting electrons are negatively charged particles.  The number of protons establishes the element's identity.  For example, uranium is element 92 and plutonium is element 94, so they have 92 and 94 protons, respectively.  Elements also have isotopes, meaning there are varying numbers of neutrons in the nucleus, which represents an isotope's mass number when added to the proton count.  So that explains why uranium-235 and uranium-238 exist.  They both have 92 protons and a difference of three neutrons.

Now think of the charged particles as very strong magnets, remembering like charges repel and opposites attract.  That means all those protons in the nucleus are trying to make the nucleus fly apart, so why doesn’t it?  Well, it’s very close to that point in a uranium atom and it wouldn’t take much to make it happen.  It doesn’t because the protons are sufficiently spaced apart by neutrons and an opposing binding energy holds everything together. 

Think of binding energy like gravity, where masses attract one another and holds things together, but only for short distances compared to charged particle forces. This “nuclear force” effect is similar to the fact that we don’t fly off the spinning earth by centrifugal force while objects far enough in space aren’t crashing into the earth. However, we can still leave earth with sufficient force (similar to overcoming a nuclear force/binding energy) to reach escape velocity. In other words, binding energy is also the minimum energy needed to apply to a nucleus to break it apart. Because atoms have different size nuclei, densities, and proton to neutron ratios, some elemental isotopes are easier to break apart than others.

Now, what would it take to push the nucleus over the edge to break it apart?  How about hitting it?  That would be similar to the comedian Gallagher Sledge-O-Matic routine on a watermelon.  Think of the watermelon as the atom and the Sledge-O-Matic as an incident particle.  When it hits the watermelon, it goes right through the rind (electron cloud) and busts the watermelon into pieces (fission fragments) sending water (gamma rays), melon (neutrons), white seeds (beta particles) and black seeds (alpha particles) in all directions. Keep in mind you still need to have a sufficient swing (kinetic energy) of the Sledge-O-Matic to break open the watermelon. Likewise, you have to have a particle with sufficient kinetic energy to overcome the binding energy of the nucleus to split it.

But how can you really hit a nucleus since it’s quite different than a watermelon?  How about shooting a particle at it? Although it's quite easy to accelerate a charged particle, simulating a bullet to strike it, a negatively charged particle can't pass through the negatively charged electron cloud because they repel one another and, if we used a positively charged particle, the electrons could catch it, not letting it pass through to the nucleus. Besides, the protons in the nucleus will also repel a positively charged particle, deflecting it and causing us to miss the target.  That’s where the neutron comes in handy and at no charge!

So where do we get neutrons from?  Well, we said that we can get them by splitting an atom, so lets use some of them as bullets to shoot at some good targets.  To get things started, we can use a radioactive element that decays by neutron emission. All we have to do from there is be good shots at hitting targets (fuel nuclei) and shoot lots of bullets (neutrons).  Since we can’t really aim a neutron, lets go with the saturation bombing technique.  We’ll put lots of targets out in our shooting gallery and shoot lots of bullets in their direction. It will be like shooting at a flock of ducks on the water with one of those huge punt gun shotguns the market hunters used in the 19th century.  If we miss the closest one, maybe we will hit the one beside it or behind it. So how do we do that?  Well, we can use uranium-235, which is symbol U, because it produces 2 or 3 energetic neutrons every time we split one with a single neutron (I would love that rate of return on my 401-K!) or plutonium-239 since that makes enough energetic neutrons too.  Wow! That's like a self-loading gun or a chain reaction! Now that's some critical thinking, Einstein!

But God didn’t stack enough U-235 together to compensate for our poor shooting ability and He didn’t make any plutonium for us to use.  So..., we either have to increase the density of U-235 atoms (enrich uranium) to give us the needed target rich environment or make some plutonium ourselves out of U-238.  (U-238 doesn't give us the neutron economies that we need primarily because the neutron energies are insufficient to split an atom; it's more like my actual 401-K.) Lets go with U-235 because that’s the good stuff.

Like all nuclear fuels, there are nearly always two fission fragments from U-235 that come in a variety of combinations, each pair having a certain probability of occurring.  That’s where a fission yield curve comes in, but you won’t be needing that today unless you really want to. If you must, I have added one in the gallery for your convenience.  What is important is that this process makes us good conservationist.  It conserves charges, momentum, mass, and energy.  The mass and energy can be a little tricky though unless you think like Einstein, where E=mC² when accounting for the mass defect between a U-235 atom and the sum of the parts, a.k.a. the binding energy.  We won’t need to go there for today’s puzzle either.

So...., getting back to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, let us NOT use momentum to figure out the position of the cache; instead, let us use fission fragments!  My spectrometer reading tells me that the first set of fission fragments streaming from our reactor or, as Heisenberg would say, the uranium machine, came out as follows.

But what happened to the other half? I hope you can identify and account for them because we need them to be successful!

Einstein says "Don't let the muggle spies steal all your hard work or they'll catch up to you in your nuclear program endeavors on the cheap, just like Stalin did!" and then sticks his tongue out.

I say stop by the posted coordinates or Albert's brother's place near GZ before or after you make the find.

Congratulations GeauxTeam! for getting your uranium machine running! I'm happy to see you got a reward at the posted coordinates for all your hard work. I will nominate you for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for being FTF!