Schrodinger's Cat

If you pay attention in high school science classes, you will probably hear about something called Schrodinger's cat. But if you listen even closer, you might hear what it is all about. This is not a theory, but more of a thought experiment. In a way, it can be confusing. Let me put in terms most people will understand.

Named for Erwin Schrodinger, it is often described as a paradox (a series of events that lead to a contradiction that defies logic, causing circular thinking). This paradox is a good example of something the observer effect affects.

Imagine a cat, hiding inside a sealed box with a flask of poison and a source of radioactive material. Due to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, this means that until you look inside of the box, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. But when you look inside the box, the cat is either alive or dead. It is no longer alive and dead at the same time.

When Erwin Schrodinger was brewing this thought experiment, it was solely meant as a discussion of the EPR article, written by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. This paradox finally occurred to him in 1935. Said article was written about the oddity of quantum entanglement, which is a characteristic of a quantum state that is a combination of the states of two systems.

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The next post will be an explanation of paradoxes.