While fascinating to the public, and certainly to science fiction authors, the Many Worlds Interpretation is also a minority view among physicists, though there is no specific evidence for or against it. A cat in a box is both dead and alive until you open the box and observe the cat. It says that until you open the box, the cat can be considered dead AND alive, but that makes no sense. Come with me now, to meet the cat and take its measure. It is a thought experiment that indicates a problem with an interpretation in quantum mechanics No, a cat cannot be alive and dead in a box at the same time. From the outside, the Observer cannot tell if the cat is alive or dead; it is only by the act of opening the box that the Observer can determine the state of the Cat, in the same way that turning the wrist turns on the Apple Watch because the wearer is then Observing the Watch. However the only way to be 100% sure of where a particle is, is to observe it. In other words, in a way we can understand. But what does it mean? Schrödinger suggested an experiment in which a living cat would be placed in a cage on one side of a metal tube. Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, though the idea originated from Albert Einstein. When you want to know the time, it is probably because you want to know what time it is Now, or how long you have before some other event occurs. Schrodinger’s Cat is something that most of us are likely to have heard of at some point in our lives but how many of us actually know what it means? The point of the cat example in the paper is not so much that the cat is an an absurdly indeterminate state, but that its state is inextricably bound up with the state of the atom. Why is it so popular, and how is it a "paradox"? A person looking into the box will either find the cat alive or dead, however it is assumed to be both alive and dead before you look into the box. Non-physicists, including artists, look at Schrodinger's Cat without the quantum mechanics. A while ago I got curious about whether Schrödinger was a “cat person”. Do not try and explain the experiment to me, I understand it. The cat is either dead or alive and you find out when you open the box and observe the cat. It is only when you observe the particle that you know if it's there or not there. Will somebody please explain the point to the schrodingers cat experiment? What is the point of Schrödinger’s Clock®? Now you may have heard of this feline before, but what you may not know is what the cat represents and how it came into existence. Take the Quiz: The Curious Tale of Schrodingers Cat. Here's what you need to know. What part of it constitutes in any way as a "paradox"? "Schrödinger's Cat" is essentially an object lesson on the problems of relying on observation alone when dealing with subatomic systems. I don’t know whether he particularly liked cats. So what does this have to do with cats? 1461) which has a box with a picture of a cat and the caption "Schrodinger's Cat Toy… What he proposed was a cat in a sealed box with a poison triggered by a device which detects radioactive decay. Thus, the famous paradox of Schrödinger’s Cat was created and the principle of the Observer Effect was illustrated. Schrödingers cat thought experiment is an example where 1. interpretation allows a situation which violates common sense of human reasoning whereas 2. does not. Why is it so popular when it is so ridiculous? p.s. A cat, with a Geiger counter, and a bit of poison in a sealed box. However, what in the world could be the point of it? Schrödinger wanted people to imagine that a cat, poison, a geiger counter, radioactive material, and a hammer were inside of a sealed container. Let us start with the scientist in question, Edwin Schrodinger. There doesn’t seem to be much information on the subject, so it seems like he just picked a (unnamed) cat for his experiment as being a convenient and familiar small mammal. A variant of the Schrödinger's cat experiment, known as the quantum suicide machine, has been proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark. You should be able to find some reading on that using the google. You should be … there is a certain probability the device was activated. For example, there is an image of a cat angrily clawing its way out of a cardboard box, with the caption “Schrödinger’s cat is alive… and very pissed off.” On August 12, 2013, which would have marked Erwin Schrödinger’s 126th birthday, Google celebrated by marking its homepage with a cat-themed doodle. This is what I am hoping to explain. Near the cat would be a vial containing poisonous gas and a trigger mechanism. Quantum mechanics says that after a while, the cat is both alive and dead. It examines the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view of the cat, and argues that by using this approach, one may be able to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation and many-worlds. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects.