Schroedinger's Cat Fun Quantum Physics Experiments You Can Do In Your Spare Time! by Arthur Rudolph ( Mag8Bob@aol.com
written 20 Oct 1996 This article is classified "Real" In the late 1920s the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger came up with an ingenious thought experiment. His proposed experiment was to see if you can kill a cat without looking at it and without the ASPCA observed , not when the event occurs, you can not tell whether the cat is alive or dead before you look in the box. Therefore, this deceptively complex cat manages to be both alive and dead at the same time, until you actually look in the box. This defies all common logic and obviously must be wrong. This is why Schroedinger created this paradox: to prove how stupid our explanations for the sub-atomic realm seem, let alone our explanations for the normal realm! There is, however, a way around this problem. If you could look at the object without a single particle hitting it, then the wave form wouldn't collapse or the universe wouldn't split. While this seems impossible, using a device known as an interferometer and a series of light polarizers it becomes a possibility. You can conclude that something is in a location by the fact that a photon does not exhibit interference. Not only that, but it also makes thousands of julienne fries . This is all thanks to the wave-particle duality of light, which is a different story altogether | |
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