Schrodinger's Cat

[Anonymous No.1603484]

Someone explain Schrodinger's Cat to me in words I can understand. Im not a physicist, but it intrigues me.

[Anonymous No.1603496]

a quantum event makes the cat die or not die.

you can only know by looking at it

the event doesnt take place until you do look at it

you looking at it effects whether it takes place or not

until you look at it, we can think of the cat as being both alive and dead as the same time.

quantum particles can be in many places at once, but we affect where they are by looking at them forcing them to be in one of the places they can be in based on probability, it's designed to make people understand this

[sage No.1603495]

>>1603484
I don`t mean to be rude but the cat analogy already IS the dumbed down version for non-physicists

[Anonymous No.1603505]

An object, unobserved, has both the state A and B. It is only until the object is observed that we determine if it is in state A or state B. Thus, observation itself changes the outcome of an experiment.

[Anonymous No.1603504]

It is a thought experiment that shows how crazy quantum mechanics are. Long story short a cat is put into a box and has a 50/50 chance of dying after a certain period of time. Quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is half dead, and half alive until someone checks.
again thats the basics of it, the chance of the cat living or dying is based on a half life of an atom.

[Anonymous No.1603510]

Great podcast explaining the Cat thought exercise:
Stuff You Should Know. Listen to episode "How Quantum Suicide Works" 8/3/2010

[Anonymous No.1603526]

>in words I can understand.

FUCK OFF ANd LEARN PHYSICS FAGGOT

[Anonymous No.1603569]

>>1603505
AND THIS STATE OF A PLUS B WAS WHAT THE PARADOX OF THIS CAT WAS SET UP TO RIDICULE: AS THERE ARE NO SUPERPOSITIONS A+B ON A HUMANLY
OBSERVABLE OR HEURISTICALLY DEDUCTABLE LEVEL.

HOWEVER IT DOES MAKE SOME SENSE TO DESCRIBE SOME OF THE UNDERLYING "SIMPLE" THEORIES SUPPORTING THE MODELS THAT GIVE VALID PREDICTIONS... SO THESE PROPOSALS ARE USEFUL TO US FOR NOW.

[Anonymous No.1603570]

>>1603484

Schoedingers cat is actually one of the early instances of scientists flipping the intellectual bird to statistically "normal" people. Simply put, too many people asked Erwin all those retarded questions about "When da teleportation gittin' here? Ya dun promised us dem teleportationers!" that he instead deflected everything into the pointless side example of the quasi-dead cat. Unfortunately, human intellectual standards have since declined, as clearly illustrated by the fact that Schroedinger's Cat persists as an effective intellectual bird even into present times, whereas more recent attempts have failed.

[Anonymous No.1603577]

It is basically Schrondinger bring the idea of quantum mechanics to the macro world. Nothing important is actually deduced from it.

[Anonymous No.1603593]

>>1603510
That's a pretty good podcast for any /sci/entist to listen to.

[Anonymous No.1603601]

Schrodinger came up with the idea of a superpositioned cat as a way of saying, "This interpretation of quantum mechanics is crazy! Cats can't be both alive and dead at the same time."

Stupid people today read it and think, "Damn, quantum mechanics says my cat can be alive and dead at the same time! Neat!"

[Anonymous No.1603602]

>>1603570

>>human intellectual standards have since declined

>>[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.1603612]

ok imagine u got this cat right? and u put it in the box with the poison etc. u know so the kitty can either die or not die right? those are the two possibilities...so u put the cat in the box and wait 60 minutes. and u woul only know if shes dead or alive when u open the box after those mins are ovra . so at the 38th lets say minute someone comes in and asks u 'is the cat dead or alive' Basically those are the two possibilities but u wouldnt know the result untill after u open the box so u say something like
'duuude both'
the same goes with the quantum particles...they can be at many places at one time but u can only judge where they are by the result/ effect of them hence opening the box.

the very act of observation changes the behaviour of the system and stuff
i

[Anonymous No.1603625]

[Anonymous No.1603633]

[Anonymous No.1603654]

in other words physicists really don't know anything

[Anomynous No.1603685]

[Anonymous No.1603693]

>>1603654
they know more than you ever will herp derp

[Anonymous No.1603713]

What exactly does "observing" a sub-atomic particle entail? You bombard it with radiation and observe the radiation that bounces back. Now, bombarding a sub-atomic particle with radiation affects that particle - the particle is so small that whatever you throw at it, it affects the particle. So, when you "observe" a sub-atomic particle, what you see is always the particle as it is being affected by the "observation method", by the radiation you're throwing at it.

Imagine a spherical balloon. Imagine your method of observation was punching the balloon. You would always "observe" the balloon as a sphere with an indentation on it from where you punched it. That's not exactly what a balloon is, but observing it would "change the state"...

This is basically true of everything, but on the macroscopic level it doesn't bother us all that much because there is a certain consistency to the universe, things act roughly the same whether we're observing them or not, we can accurately predict their behavior between observations. On the smaller scales, we can't be so sure.

[Anonymous No.1603820]

>>1603496
good and simple explanation, thx!

[Anonymous No.1603857]

>>1603601
So basically nothing has changed? Was Schrodinger stupid?

[Anonymous No.1603860]

can someone move on to quantum suicide?

[Anonymous No.1603868]

until you look at it, the cat can be in any state. as einstien postulated, observation changes the observed.

as long as the cat is in the box and you can't see it, the cat can be in any state.

[Anonymous No.1603879]

>>1603860
Same thing as the cat. Put yourself inside a completely isolated box. Slit your throat or not. Since slitting your throat or not are both part of the probability wave dictated by your brain, you have simultaneously done both, and so you are both dead and alive until someone opens the box forcing the wave to collapse to one outcome.

tldr; copenhagen interpretation is bs.

[Anonymous No.1603884]

>>1603857
wut?

[Anonymous No.1603891]

Schrodinger came up with the theory to mock the physicists who would take it seriously.

Short version is you put the cat in the box with a poison (or acid or something) that has a certain chance of getting released based on the decay of an isotope. The question is whether the cat dies, and whether he was alive or dead before you checked.

The answer, of course, is to ask the cat what he thinks.

[Anonymous No.1603887]

>>1603654

exactly!

biology is green and slimy,
chemistry is yellow and smells bad,
physics is bright and doesn't work.

[Anonymous No.1603899]

IT IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

It is a metaphor, and analogy, to describe quantum immortality, 'many worlds theory' to idiots.

everything exists. Everything. You can't touch it. When you die, YOU FUCKING DIE. But SOMEWHERE, there is a 'you' who SOMEHOW didn't die.

This is not comforting. This is not religious 'eternal life'.

[Anonymous No.1603911]

>>1603899
retard

[Anonymous No.1603930]

>>1603911
or quantum superposition, whatever, same difference, quantum theory is all bullshit anyway.

[Anonymous No.1603941]

>>1603930

>>quantum theory is all bullshit anyway.

Besides the hundreds of experimentally verified experiments it produces right?

[Anonymous No.1603946]

>>1603930
>quantum theory is all bullshit

So thats why it predictes things more accuratly then classical physics? You know Quantum Field theory is the most accurate theory ever invented.

Please take your bullshit to /b/
GTFO! TROLL!

[Anonymous No.1603953]

>>1603946
How can it "predict" anything?

[Anonymous No.1603957]

THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL EXPERIMENT, and is not designed to be such.
Rather, it is an analogy for quantum superposition and the effect of an observer in quantum mechanics

[patachu !LULZISTwQI No.1603961]

>>1603857

nope, he just had another approach on what things are made of.

"to be or not to be" is not valid on a quantum universe. things are not 1 or 0.
things can be, instead, like an analogue signal, not definitive.

[Anonymous No.1606219]

>>1603484
My head is full of limes I can't hold.

[Anonymous No.1606227]

>>1603953
It can predict the g-factor for the electron and you can calculate it via perturbation theory up to the 15th decimal digit. Then you measure it, and it agrees up to the 15th digit.

[Anonymous No.1606228]

>>1603946
From what i've read quantum mechanics is just far-fetched interpretations of a single mind boggling experiment

[Anonymous No.1606245]

Schrodinger's Cat is NOT A REAL EXPERIMENT. It is an attempt to explain the strangeness of quantum superposition (and to be quite honest, a rather poor one, given how frequently misunderstood it is). It anthropomorphizes the physics term "observer" by describing a person not knowing whether the cat is alive or dead inside the box. However, this is not how real quantum superposition works.. an "observer" is not a living person that must open the box or even a camera, but rather any other matter or energy that could come into contact with the superpositioned particle in question and thus collapse its waveform.

In other words, quantum superpositioning is something that only affects particles on the level of the very tiny (usually!*) An actual cat would never enter a superposition of both alive and dead; both the cat, the toxic substance, and the vessels that contain them themselves all act as "observers".

tldr it's just an analogy.

[Anonymous No.1606252]

>>1606228
High school. Go back to it.

[Anonymous No.1606256]

>>1606228

[Anonymous No.1606258]

>>1606228

[Anonymous No.1606261]

>>1606228
Pic related. It's the "mind boggling experiment".

Also, if quantum mechanics is bullshit then I'd like to see you try and explain how transistors work using Classical Electromagnetic theory.

[Anonymous No.1606266]

>>1603860
>>1603510

My problem with quantum suicide:

Ok, you have this gun that either fires or doesn't fire based on a quantum measurement with a 50/50 probability. If it fires, you're dead. If it doesn't, you live. Therefore, the experiment comes up with the result "did not fire" every time, from your point of view, because you die in the universe where the result was "did fire."

So, what if, instead, you point the gun at your leg. Now you run the experiment and it fires in one universe but not in the other. Now you exist in two separate universes, crippled in one but unharmed in the other. Your reality is very different in these two universes, but you can't just rule one of them out because you're dead in that one. So how can you be simultaneously aware of two completely different realities?

[Anonymous No.1606267]

>>1606261

Or how atoms work for that matter.

[Anonymous No.1606272]

Considering how popular the analogy is it's pretty bad. It's easier to understand what's actually happening by just saying radiation effects the particle you're observing.

[Anonymous No.1606274]

>>1606266
In the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, basically everytime on atom touches another atom in your body, another version of you is spawned. You are only ever just one of the versions. In ever millisecond, there are billions of other versions of you and the universe that split off.

A little too kooky for me to believe, personally.

[Anonymous No.1606361]

>>1603496
that doesn't make any fucking sense
But the analogy sounds familiar to another if not the very same concept in quantum mechanics that i know, and much more elegantly put.

Quantum mechanics works because as you get down to that level you can start counting everything quantitatively, the problem is this makes it very had to measure and observe objects because the main way we do that (light) cant get any smaller than a photon, you cant have half a photon, so when you locate the atom its like driving a truck into a tunnel to find another truck, the only way you can locate it is by hearing the crash, but once you hear it, you've changed the object in some way. this is why you have to use predictive methods for quantumn levels.

[Anonymous No.1606995]

quantum mechanics doesn't real