Schrodinger's cat - I just don't get it....

ARTHUR: Oh yeah! Is it bigger than the box?
DOUGLAS: Is it bigger than the box it’s in? No, it’s not!

Is this related to the thing about a husband being alone in the woods. If his wife isn't there to correct him, is he still wrong?
 
sigma said:
That took me a second take to (atomic) clock on.
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Its when you get down to quarks it gets really scary!

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I think a good way to understand the slit experiment is to think of a lightbulb in a room with two windows. It's trivial to understand that the bulb can be seen by two people each of their windows at the same time. The effect of the bulb being observed is caused by the photons hitting the retinas of the people.

Now imagine instead of a blub, it's a single photon. They can both observe the photon from two different positions. The same photon is hitting both people's retinas at the same time. It is the observation itself that is being observed.

(ignore the fact that our eyes ignore single photons, so we wouldn't see anything) but we COULD technically, it's just that our brains and eyes have evolved to filter out single photons as white noise. And that photons don't stand relatively still like light bulbs and travel at the speed of light.
 
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Lysander said:
Can someone actually explain this like they understand it i.e. in very concise terms? What is superposition? Can this be explained as well?
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Basically Superposition means that a quantum particle can be in all possible states at the same time while in it's quantum state and it's not until it's "measured/observed/interacted with" that it loses this quantum ability and becomes a definite value. So to take an example, there's a Quantum property called 'spin', which can have the property of Spin up or Spin down. Now when it's in it's quantum state it has the Superposition on being both Spin up and Spin down (just like the imaginary Schrodingers cat is in a superposition of being alive and dead at the same time) and it's not until you "measure/observe/interacted with" it that it becomes a definite up or down.
 
Freakbro said:
Basically Superposition means that a quantum particle can be in all possible states at the same time while in it's quantum state and it's not until it's "measured/observed/interacted with" that it loses this quantum ability and becomes a definite value. So to take an example, there's a Quantum property called 'spin', which can have the property of Spin up or Spin down. Now when it's in it's quantum state it has the Superposition on being both Spin up and Spin down (just like the imaginary Schrodingers cat is in a superposition of being alive and dead at the same time) and it's not until you "measure/observe/interacted with" it that it becomes a definite up or down.
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Yes. Although, observing something doesn't determine anything or define anything other than that particular observation itself. The observation doesn't have any effect on the properties of what is being observed.
 
inogen said:
Cats can’t be observed in superposition
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Are you sure about that? Any cat owner has definitely observed cats that have the ability to be in two different rooms simultaneously.

Based on this observation I have developed the quantum cat theory which also forms the basis of the long standing belief that cats have 9 lives.

In essence, what we observe to be a cat actually starts out as 9 cats, this explains why when you get a young cat it appears to be everywhere including permanently in the place where you are trying to put your foot. Over time these 9 cats meet a range of unfortunate ends resulting in the observed cat becoming less erratic and more predictably observed. The quantum cat only truly dies with the last of these cats.

Quantum cat theory is also assumed to go some way to explaining the need for a cat to try to exist on both sides of a closed door simultaneously although the exact mechanisms at play here are not yet fully understood.
 
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kaiowas said:
Are you sure about that? Any cat owner has definitely observed cats that have the ability to be in two different rooms simultaneously.

Based on this observation I have developed the quantum cat theory which also forms the basis of the long standing belief that cats have 9 lives.

In essence, what we observe to be a cat actually starts out as 9 cats, this explains why when you get a young cat it appears to be everywhere including permanently in the place where you are trying to put your foot. Over time these 9 cats meet a range of unfortunate ends resulting in the observed cat becoming less erratic and more predictably observed. The quantum cat only truly dies with the last of these cats.

Quantum cat theory is also assumed to go some way to explaining the need for a cat to try to exist on both sides of a closed door simultaneously although the exact mechanisms at play here are not yet fully understood.
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Yes, also my fat cat that could do with a treadmill... She thinks she is always just about to be fed, even though she's just been fed and comes home wanting to eat despite having just eaten half the local wildlife, which somehow, she can catch despite being twice the size of the cat she should be.
 
Raymond Lin said:
"until it is observed".

Sorry for the dumb question....does it know it is being observed and in turn react to it and "freezes" and collapses to a single state?

Surely not...then perhaps we are observing it incorrectly thus our method of observation only sees 1 state, when in fact the correct method sees its true form, which is it exists in all state.

It is our method of observation that gives us the incorrect, or rather, partial answer.

Is that right?

A bit like taking a photograph of a moving car say "it's frozen"...because it is a single photo, shot at a high shutter speed that doesn't illustrate it's moving.

So you are missing the dimension of time in the method of seeing the car, or drag the shutter.
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observation in this case really just means measurement - and it is impossible to measure something without forcing it to become something else.
A photon of light needs to hit a photomultiplier sensor and pass an electrical signal to be detected - so you aren't really 'observing' directly, you are measuring what happens when the photo interacts with the detector.
 
aardvark said:
observation in this case really just means measurement - and it is impossible to measure something without forcing it to become something else.
A photon of light needs to hit a photomultiplier sensor and pass an electrical signal to be detected - so you aren't really 'observing' directly, you are measuring what happens when the photo interacts with the detector.
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So...we need a new method of measuring.
 
Raymond Lin said:
So...we need a new method of measuring.
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In the double slit experiment I believe (iirc) that sensors were put in each slit and only one (at once) ever detected a photon (implying particle behavior) and there was no interference pattern. But when they were not there you got an interference pattern, implying wave behavior. It is a widely repeated experiment, and not only with light.
 
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inogen said:
A normal cat in a box, is dead or alive. Schrodinger's cat is dead AND alive. That's the point, it highlight's the difference between macro events and quantum ones and how the human brain doesn't intuitively understand quantum superposition, being, in the case of the cat, if were a quantum object, dead AND alive.

Quantum superposition is about an object at quantum level being observable to be in all possible positions and states at the same. ie, it would be possible to open the box and find the cat dead or alive, so it is both dead AND alive and exhibits on observation, both states.
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I know some of those words. Like 'cat'.
 
Its all about dimensions these days hence why two particles can seemingly be linked across vast amount of space/distance/time and break the speed of light etc etc.
 
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