Schröedingers cat.

[thebornotaku]

Schröedingers cat is dead.

[margot]

Schröedingers cat is dead.

No, he's alive.

Edited December 26, 2005 by Lindsay

[Kreutz]

No matter what you think about Quantum Mechanics, that damned cat has been dead for years now. Let it go. We'll go down to the shelter first thing in the morning and find you a new kitty.

[thebornotaku]

No matter what you think about Quantum Mechanics, that damned cat has been dead for years now. Let it go. We'll go down to the shelter first thing in the morning and find you a new kitty.

and therein lies my reasoning.

[Galkar]

Did Schröedinger ever actually have a pet cat?

[thebornotaku]

i wonder.

[Mithrandir]

The Cat is simulataniously alive and dead.

end of story.

[HappyLittleBoozer]

The Cat is simulataniously alive and dead.

end of story.

Zombie... gotcha!

*cocks rifle*

[Gundampilotspaz]

Zombie... gotcha!

*cocks rifle*

Not exactly.

[HappyLittleBoozer]

Not exactly.

I'm sure quantum physicists know at least a little something about the undead.

Of course it's stupid anyway, as the nucleus would have surely decayed eventually, killing the cat... or whoever was unlucky enough to open the box. Putting a time frame of an hour on it is just an unnecessary variable, becuase just like death, decay is enevitable. It will eventually exist in one state or the other at some point in time.

[thebornotaku]

The Cat is simulataniously alive and dead.

end of story.

but you see, you can't be opposites simultaneously. like you can't be male and female (with ovaries and testicles and breasts, everything functioning), you can't be short and tall, you can't be going left and right, etc.

[Poophy]

Have you ever tried?

[thebornotaku]

Have you ever tried?

well i tried turning my bike real fast left then right, and i ended up getting hurt pretty bad.

so yes.

[Mithrandir]

yeah, you tried right then left.

that doesn't work.

it's right and left.

[thebornotaku]

yeah, you tried right then left.

that doesn't work.

it's right and left.

but you can't. they're complete opposites.

[Samurai Drifter]

Existentialism doesn't apply to quantum mechanics. :huh:

[Mithrandir]

Not only does it not apply to quantum mechanics, it has nothing to do with quantum mechanics.

[amy]

i think schroedinger's cat makes no sense, at least from the way some guy in my chem class explained it, like "The cat is not alive or dead until it is observed".

Does that mean observed by the cat, or observed by the human? can a computer or camera observe? it sounds like anthropocentricism to me. (I think that's a word)

[Gundampilotspaz]

"The cat is not alive or dead until it is observed".

From Wikipedia:

A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas. The experiment is set up so that there is a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (meaning it exists as both simultaneously) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/dead cat" or an "undecayed nucleus/living cat."

The question is: when does the system stop existing as a mixture of states and become one or the other? The purpose of the experiment is to illustrate that quantum mechanics is incomplete without some rules to describe when the wavefunction collapses and the cat becomes dead or remains alive instead of a mixture of both.

Contrary to popular belief, Schrödinger did not intend this thought experiment to indicate that he believed that the dead-alive cat would actually exist; rather he considered the quantum mechanical theory to be incomplete and not representative of reality in this case. Since a cat clearly must either be alive or dead (there is no state between alive and dead, e.g. half-dead) surely the same must be true of the nucleus. It must be either decayed or not decayed.

Edited December 28, 2005 by Grand Magus Salvarus

[Mithrandir]

I don't see why the cat can't be "alive-dead."

Schrödinger was just too closed minded.

[Gundampilotspaz]

How can something exsist in two states at the same time?

Edited December 28, 2005 by Grand Magus Salvarus

[Mithrandir]

Why can't it?

[HappyLittleBoozer]

And we come back to zombies.

[Ceraziefish]

So, as I see it, (which is just from reading the wikipedia article and spending my HS physics class playing around with a computer physics simulator) the question is basically this:

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

Please tell me I am understanding this wrong.

[Gundampilotspaz]

You are wrong. The cat has a 50% chance to live, and a 50% chance to die. It can't be both.