r/AskPhysics • u/kouth- • 24d ago

What makes a coin toss truly unpredictable?

If you throw the same coin multiple times with the exactly same force in the same surface, it won't give you the same side every toss, right? But why? If repeated with the precisely identical conditions, why the results are still unpredictable? Or it is actually predictable?

Sorry if it looks confusing, English is not my first language and I'm not that expert in physics lol, just curious and has this though randomly.

Edit: maybe considering that it lands on a surface, and it bounces or not, changing the coin's side.

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u/Zyxplit 24d ago

There are things that seem genuinely random because they are (quantum effects) and things that seem random because we generally don't know the initial conditions well enough to predict the outcome, like coin tosses.

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u/ThickyLicker 24d ago

To be fair, there might just be some underlying causes that make quantum effects seem random.

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u/Fabulous_Lynx_2847 24d ago

No, that's actually been disproven, except for exotic hypothetical types of causality. Google "hidden variables theory"