Schrodinger's Cat
A brief introduction on Schrodinger:
* Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrodinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist
* He was made famous for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrodinger equation
* He received the Nobel Prize in 1933
* In 1935 he proposed the Schrodinger thought experiment
Schrodinger's origin and motive for the thought experiment:
* Schrodinger's thought experiment was intended as a discussion of the EPR article, named after its authors — Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen.
* The EPR article had highlighted that a quantum superposition is the combination of all the possible states of a system (for example, the possible positions of a subatomic particle).
* So what exactly is the Schrodinger's Cat?
* Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox.
* The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random even. (Somewhat similar to the Chaos theory)
The Setup:
* Inside a sealed box, there is a cat, a flask containing poison, a Geiger counter and some radioactive substance.
* If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat.
So what is the paradox?
* Since the flash of poison can only be broken when there is radiation detected, there is only a 50% chance that it will be broken
* This is as the amount of radioactive substance is so small that over a period of time, lets say 1 hour, there is only a 50% chance that an atom will decay and give off radiation
* Therefore there is and equal chance that there is no radiation at all and the cat would not be killed
* Since there are 2 situations (decayed atom/dead cat or undecayed atom/alive cat), we say that the cat is both dead and alive.
* However, when we open the box and OBSERVE the cat, we see it as either dead or alive
* Therefore the paradox arises as the cat cannot be simultaneously dead and alive
Questions posed by the experiment:
* Schrodinger's thought experiment poses the question, “When does a quantum system stop existing as a mixture of states and become one or the other?”
* In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a system stops being a superposition(Quantum superposition is defined as the collection of all possible states that an object can have.) of states and becomes either one or the other when an OBSERVATION takes place
Introduction to orbitals:
* Orbitals are where electrons appear 95% of the time and the term may refer to the physical region defined by the function where the electron is likely to be.
* More specifically, atomic orbitals are the possible quantum states of an individual electron in the collection of electrons around a single atom, as described by the orbital function
How does the paradox link to orbitals:
* The paradox states that the cat cannot be both dead and alive at the same time.
* The same as electrons in the orbitals the electron cannot be at 2 spots at the same time because it is constantly moving and orbitals are only areas where they can be found 95% of time.
