Schrödinger's cat; an impossible setup

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Post Reply
User avatar
bahman
Posts: 8791
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2016 3:52 pm

Schrödinger's cat; an impossible setup

Post by bahman »

You need a very small amount of radioactive matter that didn't radiate yet. You cannot have such a sample and make sure that it didn't radiate yet unless you observe your sample which this disturbs the system and causes the sample to either radiate or not. Either way, you have a useless sample in the first case and in the second case you have a sample that you don't know if it has radiated. In simple words, you need to observe radiation in order to conclude that the sample hasn't radiated yet but the sample is then useless since it radiated.
Impenitent
Posts: 4305
Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:04 pm

Re: Schrödinger's cat; an impossible setup

Post by Impenitent »

you don't need to observe the radiation, you need to observe the cat

-Imp
User avatar
bahman
Posts: 8791
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2016 3:52 pm

Re: Schrödinger's cat; an impossible setup

Post by bahman »

Impenitent wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:22 am you don't need to observe the radiation, you need to observe the cat

-Imp
You need a sample that it didn't radiate yet. How do you get that?
Post Reply