{"id":3,"date":"2010-03-23T13:15:35","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T13:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/?p=3"},"modified":"2010-03-23T13:15:35","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T13:15:35","slug":"schrodingers-cat-a-new-interpretation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Schrodinger’s cat – a new interpretation"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of my work colleagues was wondering where her cat disappears to when he goes walkabout, sometimes for several days at a time. After a great deal of thought, I realised that it was simply a variation on the strange world of quantum mechanics.<\/div>\n
In case you don’t know, Schrodinger was an eminent physicist who created a “thought” experiment to explore the bizarre properties and conclusions of quantum mechanics. His cat was sealed in a steel chamber with a Geiger counter and a small source of radiation. If the radioactive source emits radiation, the Geiger counter will detect it and through the signal produced release some poison that will kill the cat. He stated that the cat was in a mixed state of both dead and living. The purpose of the “thought” experiment is to illustrate this apparent paradox: our intuition says that no observer can be in a mixture of states, yet it seems cats can be such a mixture. Are cats required to be observers, or does their existence in a single well-defined classical state require another external observer?<\/div>\n
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That is why cats are such mysterious creatures, they are inherently quantum in nature…if you need any more proof, just remember the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland”, who appears and disappears at will, leaving just a smile that fades slowly as the perplexed Alice wonders where he has gone.<\/div>\n

OK enough of the heavy stuff. My new theory is as follows…<\/p><\/div>\n

Cats\u00a0exist in two states. The first one can be summarised as “Will I get fed here?” and is the state the cat is in when he is in your house or garden. Let’s call that catstate(1). The second state is “I know somewhere I will get fed!”, which we will call catstate(2). When you forget to feed your cat, it instantly switches from catstate(1) to catstate(2) and thus disappears from your house or garden. At a later time, when wherever the cat has gone forgets to feed him, he switches from catstate(1) to catstate(2) in the 2nd location and therefore disappears from the 2nd house. He reappears\u00a0mysteriously in catstate(1) at your house, apparently instantly.<\/div>\n
Before you ask, yes I do private tuition in physics, using unusual and entertaining analogies for all main areas of physics. My fees are quite reasonable, so just ask!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my work colleagues was wondering where her cat disappears to when he goes walkabout, sometimes for several days at a time. After a great deal of thought, I realised that it was simply a variation on the strange world of quantum mechanics. In case you don’t know, Schrodinger was an eminent physicist who… Continue reading Schrodinger’s cat – a new interpretation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,6,4],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cat","tag-physics","tag-schrodinger","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weblog.chylowen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}