SCHRODINGER’S CAT EXPERIMENT

 By 

    Dhruva S. Banavara 


Now, if you’re somewhat a science aficionado, you would have definitely heard of this guy named Schrodinger and his famous cat experiment. If you’re new to Quantum Physics, here’s a brief sketch… Schrodinger’s cat is basically an imaginary thought experiment that sums up a paradox of quantum superposition. In this experiment,  a cat is placed inside a box, with a hint of a radioactive substance.  According to the laws of quantum mechanics, either that substance decays, or it does not decay. If this substance decays, it triggers a Geiger counter which causes an explosion to kill that cat. Else the cat survives… Also we have to note that there is no one witnessing in person, hence, the stays a combination of two probabilities (dead or alive)…

The Cat ends up as dead and alive at the same time. Only on opening of the box will we come to know the true state. But happening of both simultaneously is absurd, right?

What is it trying to tell?

Schrodinger’s Cat is a teaching tool by Erwin Schrodinger to show us that how simple misinterpretations of quantum theory can lead to absurd results which obviously don’t match the real world (as we saw in the imaginary cat experiment, 2 absurd results, contradicting each other)…

Importance

The Schrodinger’s cat experiment is a reference for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics. It can be used to show and compare their Strengths and Weaknesses.

Practical  Applications and Understandings

It is used to highlight the strange behavior that is exhibited by particles at small scales (such as electrons), as a simple model to help recreate what actually is going on.

Our understanding of the peculiarities of Quantum mechanics as shown by the experiment, has helped us to further our knowledge on the phenomenon of Quantum Tunneling.

The Future?

Recent studies have been trying to show justifications of various degrees to prove that the absurdness is real.

For example, some researchers used particles of light, to test the limits of superposition. It can be now argued that if there is no limit to the no. of particles you can put into a quantum system, this means that the cat is really is both dead and alive at once.

There is another hypothesis that there are many universes, and we and that cat experiences simultaneously, and when the wave function happens, we can remember only one history- like, the dead cat, but there might be another universe where it might be alive.

Overall, what started as a thought experiments, is now being heavily tested, researched and simulated today.

Only time will tell where this will lead us into this exciting quantum realm…..

 

And as always, thanks for reading ☺


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