Schrodingers Cat?

Question

Was it a real cat or was just a theoretical cat?

Y'know with the bar of plutonium experiment and that.

Answer 1

It was theoretical.
The point of the 'experiment' was that the observer collapses the potential superposition of potential outcomes into a single known state, but other people wondered whether the cat itself counts as an observer? This led to a few variations on the experiment from using a virus (which is not an observer) to using a person (who certainly is). The latter was suggested by a physicist called Werner, and is known as the "Werner's friend' experiment.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Answer 2

I just hate this experiment. It is so misleading. It isn't really a question of whether it is logical or not, logic doesn't apply to the quantum world as others have mentioned. But people, please think beyond what the inventor of this experiment is trying to lead you into. The cat is a macroscopic object. "Dead" or "alive" describe macroscopic and incredibly complex states of being in the biological processes of that cat. If the cat is really alive and dead at the same time, the number of quantum events that differentiate these 2 states is almost infinite after any length of time. Not possible unless it is true that every quantum event creates 2 separate universes. Some people believe this wacko nonsense. It is ridiculous just as it was when it was dreamed up decades ago. A lot of people misinterpret this experiment. Observation means that the object interacts with something else in the environment so as to force it to take a single state because the state of that other object in the future depends upon it. The cat is an observer! Anything that interacts with the quantum event in such a way that it must collapse the state so it may continue to change state is an observer. I certainly hope people aren't speculating that human cognition is the only thing that collapses quantum probability to reality. We aren't that self-centered, are we? The atom can be decayed and not decayed for a period of time until the particle produced by that decay interacts with something else that requires an answer.

Answer 3

The cat was theoretical. It serves to illistrate, that although we cannot always measure or witness all of the processes in effect within the physical world, we are normally able to witness some of the known effects of the reaction. If we then place an unknown reaction within a system, where two possible states have two disctinct possible outcomes. Withnessing the outcome then allows us to deduce that which we cannot measure. In the case of Schrodinger's Cat, although the experiment was designed to acertain the radioactivity of a substance, we do not necessarily need to measure this, as the fate of the cat quite clearly illustrates this, and checking the pulse of a cat is considerably more simple than measuring the radioactivity of a substance.

Answer 4

Theoretical, actually conducting the experiment doesn't prove anything. Read Dirk Gentley's Detective Agency for an interesting account of it...

Answer 5

Theoretical to demonstrate a theory.

Answer 6

schrodinger's cat shows that an electron can have "several lifes": an electron has the probability to exist in more than just one place

Answer 7

NO-NO-NO!!!!!

It was a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!!!

A THEORY!!!!


The wavefunction Y(t), with the given initial condition (its form at t = 0), remains a solution of the time-independent Schrödinger equation H?(t) = E?(t) for all times t > 0!

Answer 8

No, it's just a 'thought experiment' - something to consider in order to illustrate the theory.

Answer 9

Of course it was a real cat....