Woah, careful with that joke! It’s an antique!
Maybe, but that’s my take on it. I’m pretty sure I’ve covered the Schrodinger thought experiment with an earlier comic, but the basics are this… The cat in the box experiment was meant to illustrate the paradox of states as it relates to the Copenhagen Interpretation. Which is to say, that in quantum mechanics, you’re dealing with a lot of “probabilities”, (as in electron clouds of probable positions as opposed to the cartoons of an electron orbiting a nucleus like a planet) but when you go to actually make a measurement (observation), it causes the thing you’re looking at to choose a state to be in. Basically, it’s that whole light argument where light acts like a wave until you observe it and it acts like a particle. This is because the wave is an area of probability while the particle is an exact measurement. Thus in the cat in the box experiment, the cat is not either alive or dead, but both! Well… until you make an observation and open the box, thus collapsing the wave and forcing one state to occur (so when you look, the cat has to be either alive OR dead, not both anymore). So… curiosity killed the cat!
Mind numbing I know, but this goes back to my fun little theory that “the universe acts like a program”. Like, not is. Just wanted to clear that up before everyone thought I was insane. Anyways, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t, I mean, the universe obeys certain laws and physics to make it work, and isn’t that just what programming instructions are? Equations and crazy math? Anywho, the math of this can actually be associated to gaming! Think about any of the large world or long leveled games you play. Now, your computer doesn’t process the entire thing all at once. To do that, it would take a majorly big computer or make your graphics card burst into flames. No! What happens is that only what you see (observe) gets rendered (wave function collapsed). So as you walk through a corridor, everything behind the walls still exists as just programming fluff. Once you turn the corner, that fluff has to be rendered into something tangible.
When you apply that to physics, think of it the same way as a game. Light, for instance, travels as a wave and acts like a wave until observed. Apply our game programming metaphor and it’s just easier to compute a wave moving and interacting than it is to compute an infinite number of particles. So, when you look, the program renders the wave into a particle and now you have a measurement! Woot! Not a bad connection, huh? (just a point of clarification, when we say “observe”, it’s not computing this for the sake of us humans, rather any interaction is an observation… meaning an electron being fired at your atom is making it react and collapse the any uncertainty. Just so we’re clear about this… we’re not that special…)
Moral of the story, don’t look in the box cause you have a 50% chance of killing it.
What?
physics!
Cats make my face swell up to the point I can’t see and breathing is difficult at best, so yea, I’m looking in the box. Screw the cat.
lol! must be why ol Schrodinger decided to use a cat for this experiment…
http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww201/PatrickJW/Amusing/Girls/schcatgirl.gif
Schrödinger’s catgirl. ‘Nuff said.
definitely the best version of that experiment to date!
Ehm Coffin… you are forgetting that you are also (inevitably) using another wavefunction to measure the wavefunction of object.
In the end you measure superposition of target and measurement. Plus the “dead cat” taken to reality is that you are using a wavefunction to measure superposition of “cat wavefunction” and “poison wavefunction”.
Schrodinger´s idea of describing a cat is insanely simplified where you actualy describe 1 definite wavefunction… with some form of IDEAL measurement. But in reality no wavefunction ever collapses to single discrete state.
(to put it bluntly… poison kills the cat but not the coliform bacteria in it´s intestants so something will still be alive)
“dead cat” actualy still comprises of nearly infinite amount of possible wavefunctions, not to mention that each of them can easily change when reacting to another wave.
The thought experiment (like many other things) is sadly misinterpreted…
Have you watched MacGyver? In one episode Mac (Well… Jack O´Neill for me :-D :-D) uses rock to “magnetize” the end of iron pike by bashing… it would work if rock was at least partly magnetic… that however is not mentioned, generaly you can demagnetize something by bashing as you will “randomly” distrupt organized momentum of electrons in mag. domains… likelyhood you can build that up by bashing… well 0…
however in mag. field rapid movement through it would do the job…
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PdY3L-JYzk my favourite blooper)
yes, very good! it is a bit of a simplification really, but describing the universe as a superposition of waves tends to make brains explode…
you dare question the physics of Jack O’Neil?! >)
http://coffin-comics.jesterbrand.com/2007/03/23/wrath-gate-sg1/
Well… :-D Full circle :D
What’s funny is there are now physicists who are starting to claim our universe is nothing more than a simulation. If that’s true then there must be some mods or cheats out there somewhere. God Mode here I come!
yeah, I saw that… not sure how true it is, but we probably wouldn’t know any different if we were in it. I actually made a comic about that a while back. but ya know, even if we’re not, there’s no reason why we can’t treat it as such and maybe one day “hack” the system.
Hmm, reminds me of collision detection in games, where you have larger boxes that tell the computer when to start calculating wheter or not two objects have actually collided or not…the boxes being the wave and the calculation the wave collapsing to a particular result
hmm, that like some sort of metaphysical version of angry birds?
Oh, that’s awesome. Yet also extremely icky. >.<
Schrodinger's Cat! For some reason that's the only thing I remember from the Big Bang Theory, probably because it's not very complicated.
>) well… not very in comparison to a lot of the quantum physics stuffs… it’s all jibberish most of the time though. XD
Dont worry coffin you are not alone…
Richard Feynman: “No-one understands quantum mechanics” (he included himself in the set)
Schroedinger used the example of the cat to disprove quantuum mechanics. In the original the cat was guaranteed to be dead, what you could not know is ‘when’ the cat had died (the waveform collapsed), the theory being that it must therefore be “Dead/Alive” (bleen) until you opened the box, despite classical science “knowing” it was dead - you couldn’t actually know anything until after observation. At which point you Heisenberged the cat into either state “Dead” or “Alive” (grue), but you already knew it would be “Dead” but you could not get information on the waveform as it had already been resolved, and beyond you direct observance. Thus proving the action was independent of the observer.
Which proved classic physics reflected the underlying reality, but unwittingly also proved probability and statistics were functional in quantuum states!
hmm, good bit of history there! didn’t know that part! >D