Schrondinger's Cat

[Phantaxus]

Ok I know what it is but what does it prove?

 

Is it just an example of Heisenberg's Uncertantity Principle that you cant tell the result of a experiment until you have observed it and that the act of abservation affects the reult

[Phantaxus]

sorry Schrodingers cat dunno where that n came from

[Diablod666]

ah, such as the question "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?" it cannot be proved, because the whole question is based on what happens when noone is there, and if noone is there, it cannot be recorded.

[Diablod666]

schrondinger's cat question may have been "what does Schrondinger's cat do when noone is looking?" noone will ever know, because noone is looking!

[Diablod666]

thats only a theory btw, about schrondingers cat!. another example is a question i have asked on here, light disappearing. if you placed two mirrors either side of a light concentrated on them so that it was at the right angle for the mirros to make the light bounce between them, would this continue forever? if the mirrors were perfectly reflective that is. The only thing is, our human eyes absorb light, and so does anything else that would be able to measure it, so measuring it would flaw the results of the test.

[anthomson]

No I don't think is related directly to the Uncertaintity Principle. Basically The uncertaintity principle simply means that if your try measure something, the act of measurement will actually change it slightly e.g. if you illuminate an atom to see it to see it you will also be warming it up. Schrodingers Cat is a different beast entirely 'cuse the pun. The idea is that until you actually measure the system, the outcome doesn't exist (or rather all possible outcomes exist). I think originally it was just a thought experiment (so not intended to prove anything) but in quantum theory we can actually do real experiments with mirrors and photons that demonstrate the principle. Essentailly a single photon can be proved to take all possible paths to its destination. The act of measuring exactly which path the photon took causes the probabilty wave to collapse and ties it down to one particular path. The possibility that the other paths may also still exists but cannot be seen by us has given rise to the belief in parallel universes. i.e the cat is alive in one universe, dead in another and is actually a dog in a third.

[anthomson]

Diablod666, you have reinvented the laser, which works in exactly this way ( bouncing photons between two mirrors ). However rather than letting the photons bounce indefinetly they are eventually allowed to escape as a concentrated beam.

[Peter Pedant]

yes its an example

cat = a.(alive) + b.(dead)

a and b can be zero or one

cat = 1.alive + 0.dead     cat lives!

cat = 0.alive + 1.dead    kitty gone!

and if you peek, you kinda wreck the experiment.

 

I personally dont think this has anything to do with the sound of a tree falling when no-one is round to hear it, or the sound of one hand clapping or any of the other zen bulls*it but IS quite a good example of quantum states.

[firefly]

Mostly it doesn't prove anything. It could be an example of the uncertainty principle.