What is Shroedinger's cat?

Question

I know it has something to do with quantum mechanics, but what is it supposed to represent.

Answer 1

It was a lesson in abstraction- sort of like the tree that fell in the forest... I am reading it again and am still annoyed by Mr Schroedinger. It been a while.
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Schrodinger's cat- A study in Irrelevance

Schrödinger's cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger's cat serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level.

Here's Schrödinger's (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

We know that superposition actually occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrödinger himself is rumored to have said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat.

Answer 2

There is no really simple way to explain it. It relates to quantum mechanics in physics and the nature of reality, basically commenting on something being in two different states at the same time. Schroedinger's cat is both alive and dead and of course that is seemingly impossible and thus the 'paradox'. For these kinds of situations, I like to say "is it a particle or is it a wave?" (when talking about light) and of course the answer is both, even though intuitively it can't be both.

Answer 3

it's a cat where you don't know whether it;s alive or dead.

Answer 4

Whichever way you look at it, it's dead ! :-)