Schrodinger's Cat. WTF.

[Triumph]

While we're on the subject, how do you pronounce "Schrodinger"? A hard "g" or a soft "g"? I've always wondered.

In english, it is closest to Shray-ding-ger. To make the german ö, say ay then purse your lips together.

To understand the cat in the box experiment (which no one really can, it's a paradox), you HAVE to understand the double slit experiment. You don't even have to understand how it happens, because no one is quite sure, you just have to understand what IS happening in the double slit experiment. ALL of quantum mechanics comes back to finding an explanation for that test.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

A large part of the problem is that we attempt to define the experiment in English. To say an electron goes through two slits doesn't make much sense in our contextual framework. Without that background though nothing can be understood.

I doubt most people understand that "reality" isn't reality. It's what our senses detect modified by what we have learned. That means we are biased in a quite unavoidable way. We're finite beings trying to describe things for which there are really no good terms.

 

[darkxshade]

If we can say the cat is both dead and alive... why can't we say that what's inside the box... is now a dog and maybe a rabbit? Or can we?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

It's mostly because almost all hamiltonians have a factor of h(bar)/2m in front of them.

hbar = 1.05457148 × 10^-34 m2 kg / s

m is the mass of the object in question. The reason why all these funky quantum things happen when you look at small things like electrons is because of the electron mass:

electron mass = 9.10938188 × 10^-31 kilograms

Compare to a person:

person mass = 90 kg

Now let's look at what h(bar)/2m is in each case.


h(bar)/2m [electron] = 5.78838109 × 10^-5 m2 / s
h(bar)/2m [person] = 5.85873042 × 10^-37 m2 / s


As you can see, there is a factor of 10^32 difference between the two systems. Right off the bat, if you consider quantum tunnelling, before you've even done any kind of hard calculation, you're 10^32 times less likely to tunnel as a person than as an electron. Add to that the fact that you generally consider much larger barriers in the macro scale (walls etc), and you'll get another factor of about that size.

This isn't of course a full calculation, but I've done a simple "calculate the probability that an electron will tunnel through this barrier" problem, and then repeated it with a truck tunnelling through a speedbump. The equations were essentially the same, just the masses and distances were different. I think there was a factor of 10^100 difference between the answers.

Agreed.

And it's my mistake for not employing the proper terminology. What I actually meant is that macro objects will not exhibit quantum behavior (which is what I should have said instead of quantum theory), precisely because of those probability factors.

I guess what I was trying to get across is that with Shroedinger's Cat is there seem to be people who don't grasp the concept because they think literally of a dead and alive cat which, of course, is not realistically possible. The cat is a merely metaphor for behavior of particles at the quantum level, nothing more, and has to be considered in those terms.

 

[JTsyo]

If we can say the cat is both dead and alive... why can't we say that what's inside the box... is now a dog and maybe a rabbit? Or can we?

That would be Doctor Moreau's box.

 

[ahenkel]

Sixty Signals will explain it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxqTtiWxs4

I trust what this man says. That hair screams " I think too much about science and shit to worry about grooming"

 

[Ninjahedge]

If we can say the cat is both dead and alive... why can't we say that what's inside the box... is now a dog and maybe a rabbit? Or can we?

You can, but you were told otherwise.

The problem has a predefined set of limits. You can't start making up rules. You can't shake the box, you can't put your ear to it, you can't lt it sit there. It is just a strait forward comment.

Someone says "I have a cat in a box" you cannot tell until you observe it or they tell you (which is something THEY would have had to observe) that it is dead or alive. Therefore it is both until proven otherwise.

 

[JJ650]

Wanted: Schrodinger's Cat. Dead and Alive

Fixed it for you.