Schrodinger's Cat Explanation?

Question

Can someone explain to me, in layman's terms, what Schrodinger's thought experiment means?

Answer 1

Ok, so you have this box with some poisonn in a vial in the box. The vial is set to release thepoisonn at any random time, there is no way of knowing when it will release it.

Then you put a cat in the box.

When you have the lid on the box closed, there is no way of knowing if the vial has released thepoisonn (without opening the box).

So the cat in it could be dead, if the vial has released or could still be alive, if the vial hasn't released. So, it is considered both alive and dead.



Hence it could mean we need to see something with our own eyes to know it to be true.

:)

That's how it was explained to me, anyways.

Answer 2

Schrodinger Cat Explained

Answer 3

To start, in quantum mechanics everything is viewed as a probability wave. For instance, the postion of an electron obiting an atom is given by a probability function (a wave function). This wave function can have many observable states but they all exist until you make an observation of teh electron. Once you make an observation, you force the wave function to one state - it's called the collapse of the wave function. That state is randomly determined. A simple example (and this is really over-simplified but it gets the point across) is you flip a coin into the air. Now let's suppose that we do this in the Space Shuttle in orbit so the coin just spins and doesn't fall. As long as the coin is spinning there is a 50% probability that you will see heads and a 50% probability that you will see tails if you stop the spin. Until you do stop the spin, quantum theory would say that the coin is in both the heads and tails state. Stopping the spin is equivalent to making a measurement or observation, and the coin selects one of teh two states - heads or tails - to be in. But you don't know which state will be selected when you stiop the spin - that state is determined by the wave function collapse. In this case the wave function is simple - it is 50% probability of heads and 50% probability of tails.



Now the poor Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment about wave functions. It goes like this. You place a cat inside a sealed opaque box. Inside the box is a radioactive source that decays with some half life. You set up a radiation counter inside teh box along with a poison gas container. When the radioactive substance has produced some number of counts that you have chosen randomly, the gas is released ending the cat's life.



Now radioactive decay is governed by quantum mechanics. Thus there is a probability at any given time that the counter has not reached the fatal value and the cat is alive. But there is also 1 minus that probability that the poor cat had bad luck and the counter has reached the value causing the gas to fill the box and end the feline's life. Since you can't tell which has happend without opening the box, the cat is both alive and dead according to quantum theory. This thought experiment was used to show that there are fundamental flaws in quantum theory - namely the simultaneous occupation of many states by a system until a measurement is made. We would all argue that the cat is either dead or alive - not both at once - and all we need do is open the box to find out which it is. But from a quantum view point, the cat is both dead and alive and will remain that way until we open teh box.

Answer 4

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RE:

Schrodinger's Cat Explanation?

Can someone explain to me, in layman's terms, what Schrodinger's thought experiment means?

Answer 5

Uncertainty Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty...



You cannot know everything. All you can do is assign a probability to an event. The cat is alive or dead. But, we don't know which. We can assign a probability, 75% its alive - 25% its dead. As soon as we look, the probability collapses to 100% alive or 100% dead.



The Quantum view of the atom puts the electrons in a "fog" around the nucleus. The "fog" has a definite shape, the p orbitals are 2 egg shaped lobes. We can define with as high certainty as we wish that the electron is somewhere within that volume. Generally, we say the electron is spread out as a fog over the entire volume. There is uncertainty where it is. If we find its location the fog disappears and we get an exact location.



similarly, the cat's life is a fog spread between live and dead. The fog is concentrating toward dead as time passes. But, if we look the fog concentrates into a single drop of Live or a single drop of Dead.

Answer 6

It means that our very observation of something determines if it happened or not.