Adjacent nodes of a wavefunction are separated by roughly , so a locally sinusoidal wavefunction has typical wavevector . The kinetic-energy estimate from wavefunction nodes is therefore
Equivalently, . The robust scaling is ; the precise coefficient depends on how the extent is defined and how the oscillations vary near classical turning points. For few nodes, use an order-one offset to : the nodeless ground state still has confinement energy bound from position support of order , rather than zero.
Write and use the Heisenberg uncertainty relation separately in the three Cartesian directions. Since a position coordinate is confined to an interval of length , Popoviciu's inequality on variances gives . Consequently , and the expectation value of the kinetic energy obeys
Thus an uncertainty-based lower estimate is . This confinement energy bound from position support is not sharp: the exact ground-state energy for a cubical infinite square well is . The Heisenberg uncertainty principle establishes the confinement scale ; identifying a box size with an approximate position standard deviation changes its numerical coefficient.