Shroedinger's Cat

Subject: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 10:23 AM

Greg Stephens in every thread, claims to know everything about everything. Lets see how long it takes him to tell us the well worn physcis story of Shroedinger's Cat.

Grow up kid
Its something you did
Don't know when
But you'll do it again.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 10:26 AM

Come in and sit a while, friend. I'm just going to take my afternoon nap.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 10:36 AM

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Watson
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 11:00 AM

I've been looking through Greg's postings - I can't see one where he claims to know something about everything. I have however found many entertaining and intelligent comments.

Meanwhile, from the link kindly supplied by JTT:

Dear Cecil:

Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schroedinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously live and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, the other I ain't.
If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will and won't see you in Schroedinger's zoo.
--Randy F., Chicago

Dear Randy:

Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judge
Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at--
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom--whatever--but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies?
Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough @#&!
We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed--
Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability--certainty, never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.
God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.
I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--
In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he's in heaven--but five bucks says he ain't."

--CECIL ADAMS

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 12:00 PM

Wunnerful!! Quantii in a nutshell!!

A

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 03:43 AM

And I always thought that the Shroedinger's Cat problem was that you know it has done a poop either in the house or the garden but cannot tell which!!!!!
Quack!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: fogie
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 04:35 AM

I think that this extraordinary trio is now called the Wendigo. I like their music very much. Later this month they're performing at Lydbury North--- Well Anne Marie Summers, and Steve Tyler are. Anyone there comprehend?

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Watson
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 04:57 AM

Anne Marie Summers and Steve Tyler are The Wendigo when they are joined by Julian Sutton. Without him they are Misericordia and they will be at Festival at the Edge this weekend where I very much look forward to seeing them.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 05:13 AM

Watson: You've answered in poetic mode
With such a long and fancy ode
I somehow think you've lost the plot!
Is the cat dead? or is it not?

Nigel

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 05:37 AM

Yes

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: ozmacca
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 05:59 AM

Or not.......

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Dagmar
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 06:11 AM

Great watson... and excuse my ignorance.. who or what is JTT ?... thanks again for the poem ...and as for the plot Nigel...well is not that the plot that the plot is missing ?:-) ok not such a good comment , agree, but still fantastic subject to find here... amazing site when it brings about things like this ! greetings from Dagmar... (...for further reading about the plot or not.. may be some books from DAvid Bohm)

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:48 AM

Am I confused or just plain pist? Does this feline (or not) exist? Is it a moggy, or doggy. Tom or queen. Or anyone here claim they have seen? Heisenberg may or may not have, but He may or may not have been a nut!

d8-}

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Watson
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:51 AM

Hi Dagmar.
No great mystery - the posting before mine was from GUEST,JTT. There was a URL quoted to the web page that I copied the rhyme from. I thought it was so good that it was worth sharing in this forum.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:42 AM

HALF-DEAD CAT FOUND IN BOX
Police seek Austrian physicist

New Scientist magazine. (Honest!)

Steve

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 10:46 AM

If Schroedinger had been from Haiti, presumably the cat would be undead.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 03:39 PM

No!, only half undead!!!

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Gareth
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 04:07 PM

Or there is Pratchet's version - The Cat can be dead, alive or B****y furious Lords & Ladies

Gareth

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: cyder_drinker
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 08:26 PM

Schrödinger's cat's a mystery cat, he illustrates the laws;
The complicated things he does have no apparent cause.
He baffles the determinist, and drives him to despair;
For when they try to pin him down--the quantum cat's not there!


Schrödinger's cat's a mystery cat, he's given to random decisions;
His mass is slightly altered by a cloud of virtual kittens;
The vacuum fluctuations print his traces in the air
But if you try to find him, the quantum cat's not there!


Schrödinger's cat's a mystery cat, he's very small and light,
And if you try to pen him in, he tunnels out of sight;
So when the cruel scientist confined him in a box
With poison-capsules, triggered by bizarre atomic clocks,
He wasn't alive, he wasn't dead, or half of each; I swear
That when they fixed his eigenstate--he simply wasn't there!


(Found on the web somewhere, a long time ago. With apologies to T S Eliot)

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Gray D
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 08:50 PM

What I can't understand is that I opened a box the other day and there was no cat in it at all. Alive or dead.

At least, I don't think there was.

But I'm not sure.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 05:19 PM

My cats box smells like it's got something dead in it.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 05:44 PM

Let's hope it isn't half-dead, CS!! But I think that's molecular, not quantuim phenomena you're observing. If these guys with their darned eigenstates were half as good as they are cracked up to be they could devise a cat-box that emptied itself every time you observed it!!

Now that would be a nice piece of applied science!

A

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Genie
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 01:16 AM

Fantastically funny poem, Watson! So also the one you posted, cd!

Steve, LOL at that science mag headline!

Amos, let us know if/when someone invents that self-emptying litter box.

Genie

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Wincing Devil
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 01:29 AM

I can never keep Schrodinger's cat and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle straight. They both seem to state that by measuring or observing something, we change it. Stick a thermometer in a glass of watter, the thermometer will affect the temeratrure of the water so you will never truly know what the temerature of the water was befor you measured it. It's late and all this thinking is making my brain hurt. I'm going to bed so I can getup early tomorrow, put on funny clothes and do some 18th century shopping.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 04:15 AM

WD: the thermometer thing is no problem, first you heat (or cool) the thermometer to the temperature of the water!
Of course, first you need to know the temperature of the water, so....
Damn, failed again.

Nigel

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 05:52 AM

Perhaps we could try Shroedinger's experiment with an anonymous GUEST - I don't think anyone would be interested enough to ever open the box - we'd all rather leave GUEST in a state of limbo !

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Gareth
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 06:35 AM

On the other hand Dave, we could just way the bock down with roundshot, and leave it on the Whitstable Flats at low tide.

Now is'nt that a nasty thought.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: The Pooka
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 04:30 PM

*LOL* to this whole excellent discussion & poetry workshop... Heeheehee / Ahem See here now, you muddy moggies you, have a little respect, not to say awe ("Aw!"), for the Thought Experiments of the Eminent Fizzycists wouldyez pleez..har har har MMRROWWWWWRRR!! / Say, can't we get the learned Schroedinger's *'Catspaw* to materialize in here (or not) and settle the question (or not)?

(Pooka steps back out of the 'catter's box, measuring his Velocipede so as to obscure his Positron.)

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST,Nathan Benoit
Date: 06 Apr 04 - 12:06 PM

Have you ever wondered why the more organic a mass is the slower it travels, when ever you see footage of ,anything thats mostly element , sped up it gives the look of being fluid, yet when you observe living matter of what ever form it becomes choppy.
if one was to think about how fast we are really moving,
1. im walking
2. the earth is rotating
3. the earth is moving around the sun
4. the sun is moving within our galaxy
5. our galaxy is moving outward with the expansion of the universe
6. what speed is our known universe moving at ?

does some one out there have the math on these ? if so please let me know at [e-mail]

Subject: Lyr Add: GALAXY SONG (Eric Idle & John Du Prez)
From: Amos
Date: 06 Apr 04 - 12:34 PM

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that evolving,
    Revolving at 900 miles an hour.
    It's orbiting at 19 miles a second,
    So it's reckoned,
    A sun that is the source of all our power.

    The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
    Are moving at a million miles a day,
    In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
    Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

    Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars,
    It's 100,000 light years side to side,
    It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick,
    But out by us it's just 3,000 light years wide.

    We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
    We go around every 200 million years,
    And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,
    In this amazing and expanding universe..."

                                              E. Idle

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Amos
Date: 06 Apr 04 - 12:36 PM

Nathan:

Schrodinger's Cat had little or nothing to do with the speed of the expansion of the universe. The numbers you ask for are in the song above. Except for how fast you are walking.

A

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 06 Apr 04 - 03:25 PM

Just started reading a book that answers all of that -- it's a coupla years outdated (1997) but eminently readable --

The Whole Shebang, A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report
by Timothy Ferris (author of Coming of Age In the Milky Way

By the way, I also just found out (from the book) that Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died of a burst bladder suffered in a bout of beer drinking. (I wonder if folk music was involved . . . nah, folk musicians know enough to "drain the brine off the pickle" occasionally.)

Linn

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 07 Apr 04 - 10:37 AM

Hey, Guest Nathan Benoit --

Have you been back here since you posted? Since you're a Guest, I can't send you a PM, so I e-mailed you at the address you gave. It immediately bounced. What gives?

Linn

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 07 Apr 04 - 11:00 AM

Every thime I see this thread it brings to mind the improvizational game of "minister's cat"

Shroedinger's cat was an awesome cat
Shroedinger's cat was an anvil cat
Shroedinger's cat was an aardvaark cat
Shroedinger's cat was an aluminium cat
Shroedinger's cat was an april cat
Shroedinger's cat was an apricot cat
Shroedinger's cat was an awkward cat
Shroedinger's cat was an animal cat
shroedinger's cas was an admiral cat
Shroedinger's cat was an alabaster cat.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: HuwG
Date: 07 Apr 04 - 11:11 AM

The missing last verse to E. Idle's "Universe" song, from the Python film, "The Meaning of Life":


The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of life, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
'Cause there's b****r all down here on earth.


****


In a BBC programme devoted to the Python's music, Mr. Idle accompanied himself on the guitar, while singing this. Neither I, nor most of the guitarists I know, could follow his fingers as they attacked the neck of the guitar. Nor do many of us have his singing voice's register. However, I sometimes do this song in informal company as:


Just [G]remember that you're [D]standing on a [C]planet that [G]evolving,
And revolving at nine [C]hundred miles an [D]hour.
It's orbiting at ninety miles a [D7]second, so it's reckoned,
The [D]sun that is the source of all our [G]power.

The sun and you and [D]me and [C]all that we can [G]see,
Are [Am]travelling half a million miles a [C]day,
In an outer spiral arm, at twenty [G]thousand miles an [Em]hour,
Of the [D]galaxy we call the Milky [G]Way.




As I am told, a bit fact-heavy, but easier to remember than all those philosophers.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: EBarnacle
Date: 22 Jul 12 - 09:53 PM

I was having a Philosophical Discussion about Quantum events at a party this evening and came up with an updated version of the Shroedinger question, vis.:

If you place two horny teenagers who like each other a lot in a darkened room with comfortable furniture and tell them that no one will disturb them for a while, will the condom that each has in his/her pocket get used? Will they have sex without it? What are the odds that you will interrupt them in some sort of physical contact when you open the door and turn on the light?

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Jul 12 - 11:13 PM

I have never understood the parable of Schroedinger's cat. I guess just a Newtonian girl at heart. Maybe that's why I prefer traditional music, too.

Wikipedia has this to say:

"He (Schroedinger) proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle... The thought experiment illustrates the counterintuitiveness of quantum mechanics..."

I must be real intuitive, because quantum mechanics makes no sense to me whatever.

Wikipedia also says:

"Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states."

All I've got to say is that here in Missouri, a powder keg is gonna either be exploded or not. Furthermore, I'm glad Einstein never had a job in public safety.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: scouse
Date: 23 Jul 12 - 07:19 AM

And don't forget " If anyone ever says to you they understand Quantum Physics!" They're lying!!!

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Fergie
Date: 23 Jul 12 - 09:15 AM

Wanted dead or alive: Shroedinger's cat!

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 Jul 12 - 11:19 AM

Good one, Fergie!

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: EBarnacle
Date: 23 Jul 12 - 11:46 AM

But is it dead or alive before you open the sealed box? This level of quantum physics is more philosophical than physical. It is analogous to the "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" question. The question becomes "At what level does perception create the event?"

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Gurney
Date: 23 Jul 12 - 06:03 PM

If there was a cat in a box in a forest and a tree fell on it but there was no one there, (apart from the cat!) would anyone hear it complain?

Batsy, I read somewhere that Brahe bust his bladder because he had to hold on until royalty left the room. I think.

Subject: RE: Shroedinger's Cat
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Jul 12 - 08:05 AM

Amos, " if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it ", it obviously didn't make a sound, I rather think you meant, " if a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to here it, does it still make a sound ? " well that's a good question.

Dave H