schrodinger's cat

[gh0st]

ok so here's what happens, you are in cohortz with schrodinger, you both go and get a cat and put him in a box with a piece of radio active material a geiger counter and a poisonous gas trapped in a seperate box. there is a fifty fifty chance that the radioactive material will decay setting off the geiger counter and letting the poison out. now until the outcome is observed the cat is said to be in a state of quantumn superposition (just wiki it) so you go away on a one week all expense paid cruise and schrodinger see's the outcome! now the question that you are supposed to talk about is: is the cat still in a state of super position because you haven't observed it yet or is it just still a normal cat.

if this needs to be somewhere else then please move it

[Ryudo Lee]

What kind of radioactive material are we talking about here?  If it's something that will give a lethal dose of radiation before the poison is loosed, then the cat's current state can be accurately predicted after the cruise.

Further, what is the physical state of the cat prior to being put in the box?  Was it well fed?  Did it drink any water prior to being put in the box?  After a week, I would think the cat would be dead of either starvation or dehydration, if the radiation and/or poison doesn't get him first.

How big is the box?  Does the cat have room to do what some cats normally do when trapped... panic?  Because then that will degrade the cat's physical state and increase chances of taking in the lethal dose of radiation/poison, and decrease the time to become malnourished/dehydrated.

All that aside, my answer is that after a week in the box, the cat can be predicted to be dead, with at least 99% accuracy (after all, some cats are real fighters, so that 1% chance remains).  The superposition question is moot, because now the ASPCA is after your butts...

But while you're in prison and no one is observing you and Bubba the axe murderer who are sharing a cell, then I guess you too are in a superposition of being assaulted or not... I mean, you did kill a cat... and Bubba likes cats.

[gh0st]

What kind of radioactive material are we talking about here?  If it's something that will give a lethal dose of radiation before the poison is loosed, then the cat's current state can be accurately predicted after the cruise.

Further, what is the physical state of the cat prior to being put in the box?  Was it well fed?  Did it drink any water prior to being put in the box?  After a week, I would think the cat would be dead of either starvation or dehydration, if the radiation and/or poison doesn't get him first.

How big is the box?  Does the cat have room to do what some cats normally do whentrapped... panic?  Because then that will degrade the cat's physical state and increase chances of taking in the lethal dose of radiation/poison, and decrease the time to become malnourished/dehydrated.

All that aside, my answer is that after a week in the box, the cat can be predicted to be dead, with at least 99% accuracy (after all, some cats are real fighters, so that 1% chance remains).  The superposition question is moot, because now the ASPCA is after your butts...

But while you're in prison and no one is observing you and Bubba the axe murderer who are sharing a cell, then I guess you too are in a superposition of being assaulted or not... I mean, you did kill a cat... and Bubba likes cats.

first off it doesn't matter what radioactive material it is as long as it has a fifty fifty chance of decaying

secondly to answer most of your questions the cat isn't staying in there for a week because only you are going on a one week trip schrodinger is staying and without your knowledge has taken the cat out after a day.the physical state of the cat is well fed perfectly nurished cat that was just unlucky enough to meet you and schrodinger.

finally the box is big enough for the cat to not hurt itself and the radioactive material is set in a different lead covered roomand the poisonous gas is in a seperate room altogether.

and at the same time we would be doing the cat a good favor by making him invincible if things go as predicted. with all consent from the aspca

[e_voyager]

i'm confused. how is this a game?

[techmaster-glitch]

I've heard of this theoretical experiment before. But, that was when I was too young to really read and understand it in depth, so...

[King Of Hearts]

I a mime was clapping with one hand and a tree falls on him in the forest and no one hears it... does it still make a sound?

I fear I will find a radioactive cat wich breathes poison Gas by the end of my trip.

[gh0st]

it's not a game it's a discussion for fun... comeon am i the only one who contemplates quantumn physics for fun?

and yes it is one of those if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it does it make a noise. heck i hve a better one if a tree falls in a forest and only one man is around to hear it does it still make a sound?

basically can a single man/woman observe anything in superposition or does the second that even one man/woman observe it, it becomes normal (either fallen or still standing)

[e_voyager]

i do but people look at me strange when i bring it up.

[Eibborn]

I dunno, man, but I do know that I ain't gunna be the one opening the box to check!

[Darkdragon]

I say that by the time you open the box, the cat would be missing because it left because it got bored of the experiment. 

Ok, Schrödinger's cat, to the best of my knowledge, was an experiment to refute a particular interpretation where things of atomic scale does not translate well into the larger scale. Thus, if you can accept that fact that atoms can be both decayed and not decayed at any given point of time, you are also accepting the notion of a simultaneously dead and alive cat. Forget about what you'll observe when you open the box; what does the cat observe?

[Ryudo Lee]

first off it doesn't matter what radioactive material it is as long as it has a fifty fifty chance of decaying

Yes it does.  If the material is radioactive we need to know if it's exposing the cat to a lethal amount of radiation.  If the cat's irradiated then it's death is assured, pretty much.

secondly to answer most of your questions the cat isn't staying in there for a week because only you are going on a one week trip schrodinger is staying and without your knowledge has taken the cat out after a day.the physical state of the cat is well fed perfectly nurished cat that was just unlucky enough to meet you and schrodinger.

Then the whole thing is moot because Schrodinger observed the cat.

finally the box is big enough for the cat to not hurt itself and the radioactive material is set in a different lead covered roomand the poisonous gas is in a seperate room altogether.

Again this makes the question moot.  How would the cat get exposed to the radioactive material or even the poison?

and at the same time we would be doing the cat a good favor by making him invincible if things go as predicted. with all consent from the aspca

If things go as predicted, there is no experiement.

[Tapewolf]

Yes it does.  If the material is radioactive we need to know if it's exposing the cat to a lethal amount of radiation.  If the cat's irradiated then it's death is assured, pretty much.

For something like this you'd probably use Americium-241 or a similar source.  This is the stuff you find in smoke detectors.  You probably wouldn't want to eat it, but other than that it's pretty harmless stuff.

[techmaster-glitch]

   Actually, Tape, Ryudo, I think the experiment goes something like this; the radioactive material actually is way too small to be lethal in any way to the cat, radiation killing the cat is not the experiment. The material has exactly a fifty percent chance of decaying, and if it does, it sets off a Geiger counter, which activates a mechanism that cuts a string holding a hammer up, which then swings down and smashes a flask. The flask contains the deadly poison gas.
   The experiment postulates that because the radioactive material has precisely a 1 in 2 chance of decaying, and you aren't observing the cat in the box, it is suspended in a state of superposition (that is, dead and alive simultaneously) because you don't know if the Geiger counter has gone off or not.

   Personally, I think it's all rubbish. It uses the same question as the tree falling in a forest with no one around and not making a sound conundrum, with the answer that it does not. I say screw that, it does. Sound is the vibrations in the air, it is not necessarily dependant on something actually interpreting the vibrations and making them into something we can understand. All our senses, sight for example, work in exactly the same way. We see patterns on light which our brains translate into vision we can comprehend. Yet we know that said light exists even if we aren't present.
   So in the case of the cat, I say it's either dead OR alive if you haven't looked at it. There is no limbo.


Of course, its entirely possible that I'm rambling with absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. I don't know, I haven't take physics yet (especially not quantum). If so, ignore me.

[Tapewolf]

   Actually, Tape, Ryudo, I think the experiment goes something like this; the radioactive material actually is way too small to be lethal in any way to the cat, radiation killing the cat is not the experiment. The material has exactly a fifty percent chance of decaying, and if it does, it sets off a Geiger counter, which activates a mechanism that cuts a string holding a hammer up, which then swings down and smashes a flask. The flask contains the deadly poison gas.

That's what I'm saying.  You wouldn't use a spent fuel-rod, you'd use a low-level source like in a domestic smoke detector.  Most sources of that kind tend to emit radiation quite frequently though, so it would be more like "Have you had X emissions within Y hours" rather than 'have you had a single emission', since you're likely to pick up cosmic rays and background radiation at that level and you may as well dispense with the source entirely.

Not that it matters since the whole thing was intended as a thought-experiment rather than an actual proposition 

[techmaster-glitch]

That's what I'm saying.  You wouldn't use a spent fuel-rod, you'd use a low-level source like in a domestic smoke detector.  Most sources of that kind tend to emit radiation quite frequently though, so it would be more like "Have you had X emissions within Y hours" rather than 'have you had a single emission', since you're likely to pick up cosmic rays and background radiation at that level and you may as well dispense with the source entirely.

Oh yeah, now that I think about it, it was something like that...

[Ryudo Lee]

Okay, then the radiation thing needs to be stipulated.

secondly to answer most of your questions the cat isn't staying in there for a week because only you are going on a one week trip schrodinger is staying and without your knowledge has taken the cat out after a day.the physical state of the cat is well fed perfectly nurished cat that was just unlucky enough to meet you and schrodinger.

I still have a problem with this though.  The cat has been observed.

[Cogidubnus]

According to the question presented, I think what you're asking is if Schroedinger tells you the cat is alive, but you have no seen the cat yourself, is the cat still in a state of limbo (superposition, whatever).

The answer is, according to that logic, everything you are not observing at any time is in a state of limbo - I may of course be misinterpreting something. But it seems to be that this is what is implied by the question - you have not seen China or Japan or Africa, or even that town across the highway, and thus, you cannot be absolutely certain that the town or continent exists. You could have been lied to your entire life - you can suspect, but you cannot know with 100% accuracy.

[King Of Hearts]

now imagine it from the point of view of the cat...

[gh0st]

According to the question presented, I think what you're asking is if Schroedinger tells you the cat is alive, but you have no seen the cat yourself, is the cat still in a state of limbo (superposition, whatever).

The answer is, according to that logic, everything you are not observing at any time is in a state of limbo - I may of course be misinterpreting something. But it seems to be that this is what is implied by the question - you have not seen China or Japan or Africa, or even that town across the highway, and thus, you cannot be absolutely certain that the town or continent exists. You could have been lied to your entire life - you can suspect, but you cannot know with 100% accuracy.

yes that is exactly what i was asking! and your logic is very good, but there is a problem if i haven't already made it known but only schrodinger and you have seen the cat and knows that the cat has a fifty fifty percent chance of living, because there are two sentient minds with the knowledge of what this cat might be could it be in a state of both dead and alive,  it's not the same as china, japan, wyoming, or england because many people have heard of and seen it but because only two people have heard of this experiment (not in real life of course) would your reality on what was about to happen affect schrodinger's reality consequentially letting schrodinger observe the cat in a state of superposition or both dead and alive. personally i hope that schrodinger can oberve superposition

[Gabi]

Well, in a way, everything you don't know is in a state of superposition for you.

The cat, on the other hand, would know how it feels.

[Omega]

I say that there is no simple 'yes' or 'no' answer to this question. Well, you can pick either one, but it still won't change the out come/results.

Yes, we don't know is the cat dead/alive, it IS still in a state of quantumn superposition, but only to us.
No, it is not, because the might know if it's dead or alive. There just might be someone/thing that knows is the cat alive or not.

In other words, this is an abstract dilemma, a man made question that has no effect to the outcome of this experiment, even if we would know the answer before doing it.

Ergo, stop wasting my time.


Edit:

[Gabi]

Who's wasting your time? No one asked you to reply.

[Nelix]

I reckon the cat's dead, according to Sod's law that: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Unless of course you want the cat dead, then it's properly found away to use the vial of poison and the radioactive isotpe as a weapon against you when you plan to observe it.

[Slowtini]

...
Wait, the box is airtight... right?
Death by suffocation. 100% probability

Also, given the fact that the chances of the release of the poison gas is 50%, and you have no way of observing it, does NOT induce superposition, because you still have one observer left, the CAT!

Therefore, the cat is either dead, or the cat is alive... You'll never know till you open the box.

BUT! The cat WILL know whether or not it is alive, or dead... well, it wouldn't know if it was dead because it would be DEAD, but that's a whole nother' discussion.

Also, the cat would probably make quite a bit of noise if it is going through it's death throes, due to a release of poison gas... All you would need to do is listen.

[Anonamous]

I'm actually going to de-lurk to sort this out because I'm a physicist undergraduate and I can help here.

The currently accepted theory in this topic that the cat is dead or alive and we just don't know.

Now in a classical mechanic world (i.e., the one we're familiar with) this is true, but it is true because the quantum superposition is constantly been broken. The air in the box with the cat will be hitting him and hitting the box and it continues to have an effect on the wider universe.

However assuming an ideal situation where the quantum superposition is not broken instantly the cat is in fact both dead and alive, and remains so until it is observed.

And critical note here, observed does not mean comprehended by intelligent life. If a laser were fired across the box and would hit a live can and not a dead one than this would break the superposition, even if we did not know the outcome of the lasers path the photons would react differently depending on if the cat is alive or not and this breaks the quantum superposition.

And the weirdest thing is the living cat could see the dead cat. The two cats would be able to interact with each other and act as if both of them are there.

Now before you go into "does that mean the cats start inside each other?" or "could the living cat breath the dead cats toxic gas?" please remember that on this scale such things would break the quantum superposition instantly so on something this scale, yes the cat is dead or alive. But on something small we can keep isolated, like a photon, then it will exist and be able to interact with each other.

The Young's double slit experiment is famous for proving the wave/particle duality problem, but we have actually done experiments when a single photon has travelled through both slits, formed two waves and interfered with itself.

Schrodingers cat was conceived as an example of how absurd the whole concept it, and to our minds, which have evolved to deal only with classical mechanics, it doesn't make sense. But that's because we only see the macroscopic world. The largest thing we've ever managed to pull of quantum superposition with is a cluster of about 20 carbon atoms and we were quite surprised we managed that.

Don't try to get your head round it, you won't. The human mind can't comprehend quantum mechanics but we've done the maths and experiments and proven it.

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"