If you seal a cat in a metal box with a decaying radioactive substance and a jar of cyanide, isn’t the cat both alive and dead until you open the box and look? The paradox that this week’s Frontiers of Science lecture presented caused an artistic freshperson to go Banksy on some quantum mechanics.
20 Comments
@Fernzang Find out what the cat is all about… Wein lounge @ 7pm TONIGHT
@Anonymous That’s all good, but I’d really like for someone to explain Hermitian operators to me.
@3253x they’re not that bad!!! mcquarrie problem 4-18.
@Anonymous yoUVe just seen a jazz cat.
@Anonymous JAZZ KITTEHZ
@Jazz Cat Jazz Cat
@JAZZ CAT
@Anonymous this is a JAZZ CAT
@SEAS '13 what a shame that one of the greatest minds of any generation so involved in the development of one of the most influential and most accurately verified theories in scientific history will always be remembered by most people for this silly thought experiment. Fucking fro sci perpetuating this garbage.
@Anonymous that “silly thought experiment” only shows how far the foundations of quantum mechanics (and the universe) are from how we perceive and have perceived them to be for eons. Not a bad thing to have your name attached to.
P.S. There is also this little thing called the Schrodinger Equation named after him that pretty much anyone with basic knowledge of modern physics or chemistry is aware of.
@Anonymous The point is people (laymen and non-science majors, many of which are taking frosci) aren’t gonna remember Schroedinger’s equation. Nor are they going to remember the crux of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. They’re gonna remember that cat that’s alive or dead or both or something, and that silly Schroedinger man who came up with it. I have no way of knowing the contents of that Frontiers lecture, however I simply hope they delved into it a little further than just explaining how the cat is alive and dead.
This is partially because I remember sitting in my principles of econ lecture not too long ago and hearing someone (presumably a Columbia College, or perhaps Barnard student in which case all this is pointless criticism anyway) lamenting about how she didn’t think quantum mechanics was real and how it just seems silly. Naturally I am now doing the only reasonable thing: anonymously complaining about it on the internet.
@Hmmm Hey man, Schroedinger’s pussy has nothing to do with silly thought experiments. Schroedinger’s pussy is real ok?
@Anonymous ^it’s a jazz cat. Fernzang the jazz cat.
@Anonymous This cat has nothing to do with frosci and everything to do with JAZZ.
@unacceptable frontiers. it will always and forever be frontiers. not frosci. never frosci.
so stop it.
sincerely,
cc ’12
@Anonymous The cat’s name is Fernzang.
@CC '12 Dear Bwog,
It’s just a cat.
@that is just a cat. i fail to see that it has anything to do with quantum mechanics.
@Anonymous Neither does Schrodinger’s Cat
@Uh oh. Argument time Or does it?