What happens if you actually do the Schroedinger's cat experiment?

Question

galactic_man-of slightly-over- bearingness:
If I was a physicist I would make a lot more money too. If you are trying to make me feel bad about not understanding it TOO bad!
I don't understand it.
Most people don't understand it.
I'm sure Schrødinger himself thought about it for a long time.

If you recorded audio from the breaking of the poison vial would the cat die/notdie then or when the first PERSON observed it?

If it is when you open the box then would the recording also exist in a correlative in/out derived state?

Answer 1

You get or you don't get nasty letters from PETA.

Answer 2

"What happens" in the context of what the person observes is clear and has been answered; he opens the box and sees a dead cat, and listens to an audio recording of it, *or* he sees a live cat, and hear's that recorded too. What the controversy is about is what the quantum "state" of the cat and recorder are *before* the observation is made. According to QM, they are both in a mixed state beforehand, but the two substates are uncorrelated, which means that, because the cat is so big and warm, the dead and life substates do not interfere with each other. That means classical probabilites can be applied to the ultimate observation - 50% live and 50% dead chance of observation, with no wave phenomena complicating things. Incidentally, the same could be said of the observing person after he sees the cat, but before his boss checks in on his progress. The boss calculates the observer to be in an uncorrelated mixed state of having seen a dead cat and having seen a live one, before he opens the door of the lab. What confuses people about all this, is they assume that QM is suppose to be describing some objective "reality" independent of observers. It is not. It's just a humble effective theory that accurately predicts the probability distribution of future observations based on current measurements. Everything else is subject to unprovable interpretation. To demand more is to attempt to answer questions that physics does not deal with, like "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound". That's metaphysics (meta means "beyond")

Answer 3

When you opened the box, the cat would be either alive or dead, but I don't see how you could confirm a 3rd state, neither alive nor dead, before you opened the box. Even if you had a trick, like a webcam in the box, you defeat the idea, which is that the cat is in a 3rd state only if you don't KNOW it is really alive or dead. Opening the box is just one way to know, but it is the knowing and not the opening that counts. In other words, all the story really says is that if you don't know something, then you don't know.

I never though much of Schroedinger's cat.

Answer 4

You collapse the probability wave when ever you look at the data. Recording the death of the cat isn't sufficient because you haven't listened to the tape.

The idea of the cat still holds in a macroscopic world. The cat is either alive or dead until you look in the box.

Perhaps it would be better to think of it as a game. You deal one card from a deck to each of two people. They have bet a large amount of money.

The first person turns over his card and it is a 10 of spades. Now, you could say that the second player has probably lost, but you don't know if he has lost or won until he turns over his card.

Answer 5

Responder campbelp2002 is about right. If you performed the experiment and opened the box, yes, the cat would be either alive or dead. The observation which fixes the quantum state is not, however, made by the experimenter -- it is made by the radiation detector that dispenses the poison.

Answer 6

Schroedinger's cat experiment is a vulgarization. What is meant by the exaggeration of the cat is that a state of a PARTICLE is not known till it is measured, since a cat is made up of alot of particles, it can't actually be an experiment.

Answer 7

The schrodinger's cat is an analogy of trying to explain the quantum theory of superposition. It would be pointless to perform an actual experiment on a cat.

By asking such a question, it exposes your lack of understanding of the what the theoretical experiment is about.

Answer 8

It is a paradox. The experiment will fail. I looked at an illustration on line it is not plausible.

Answer 9

I want to see the answers. I have included this on my watch list.
I would like to familiarize myself with this experiment.

Here's a link for your enjoyment:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/6dff/

Answer 10

You will find the cat. Dead or alive. Not both.

Answer 11

Your cat, if it survives, will be very pissed off and probably scratch your eyes out.