If you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it. Schrodinger's Cat Explained (?!)

Ever wondered about what shrodinger's cat was all about?

Schrodingers Cat is one of the most famous thought experiments in modern physics. Created by Austrian Physicist Erwin Schrodinger back in 1935.

The gist of the experiment is as follows:

In a hypothetical experiment...a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a radioactive sample, a Geiger counter and a bottle of poison.

If the Geiger counter detects that the radioactive material has decayed, it will trigger the smashing of the bottle of poison and the cat will be killed.

The experiment was designed to illustrate the flaws of the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics, which states that a particle exists in all states at once until observed.

If the "Copenhagen interpretation suggests the radioactive material can have both decayed and not decayed in a sealed environment, then it follows that the cat too is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

The beautiful animation with "scribbles" by Chavdar Yordanov, graphically explain the thought experiment (well, sort of...)

There have been many objections to the Copenhagen interpretation over the years. These include: discontinuous jumps when there is an observation, the probabilistic element introduced upon observation, the subjectiveness of requiring an observer, the difficulty of defining a measuring device and to the necessity of evoking classical physics to describe the "laboratory" in which the results are measured.

So, are you any the wiser?? Probably, but then again the chances are probably not, it all depends on if you observe it or not.

I agree with Richard Feynman; "If you can't explain something in simple terms, you probably don't understand it"

Charles Leon 2nd August 2017