Schrödinger's Cat For Dummies?

[Precision]

quantum mechanics says that the cat is both alive and dead.

But it really isn't about the cat, it is about the quantum decay of radiation that is both decayed and not decayed. So the geiger counter has both activated the poison canister and not activated the poison canister.

The observation "makes" the decay (or not decay) real to you, which kills the cat / exhibits itself in a dead cat.

The difficulty is that in the math - both answers are equally valid and should / must occur. So we get into "other worlds" / alternate realities ... to explain how it can be both.

Schrodinger's cat is a simplified way of explaining to his contemporaries at the college of this and that, how foolish they were in their dogma. No one has figured out the riddle as our theories doesn't reconcile the things in quantum mechanics with the things in regular physics...

not that I probably shed any new light on the subject.

[Greg]

Thanks, Guys. I understand that the act of observation is what is supposed to collapse the "alive" reality. However, I do not understand, math or not, how the act of outside observation should matter.

Well then you're in good company, because noone else really does either. The Uncertainty Principle is pretty messed up, too. (As in, if you measure the cat's velocity with sufficient precision, you no longer know where it is....)

Clearly, from the observative point-of-view of the cat, there is only one reality.

That is surprisingly debateable. (Hint: Which cat?)

[toad]

As a starting place consider, is observation actually a passive act? To know the location of a particle how do you locate it without effecting its speed, location, energy level, or even its form? Usually if you determine a position you can't determine speed. If you know the speed you lose the location. Speed and location comes to predictions made by the use of probability. An electron can be a particle by itself but when bound with a proton it is considered to be in a field of a certain shape, not in a position in orbit around the proton at a particular speed, or distance from the proton. If the electron is moving by itself how do you measure it's speed with out affecting it.

[workinwifdakids]

All observation affects the observed. As we study smaller objects for shorter amounts of time, the results of this maxim becomes more outlandish and more implausible until - if it were told without evidence - we'd dismiss the person explaining it as either a prankster or a lunatic.

For example, we know that if we observe something and not observe something, we get two different results.

Here's the scary part: if we wait an infinitesimal amount of time after the item has moved, and then randomly decide to observe the item... the item has already reacted as though it had been observed. Credible scientists are wondering whether our act of observing actually warps time somehow.

Oh, and the reason Schrodinger chose a cat? Because no one actually cares if the cat's alive or dead. Had it been Schrodinger's dog, we would've figured all this out by now.

[Greg]

All observation affects the observed. As we study smaller objects for shorter amounts of time, the results of this maxim becomes more outlandish and more implausible until - if it were told without evidence - we'd dismiss the person explaining it as either a prankster or a lunatic.

For example, we know that if we observe something and not observe something, we get two different results.

Here's the scary part: if we wait an infinitesimal amount of time after the item has moved, and then randomly decide to observe the item... the item has already reacted as though it had been observed. Credible scientists are wondering whether our act of observing actually warps time somehow.

I once had a physics teacher who joked with us that you could walk through a doorway, and just as you were walking through the doorway you could lurch to the side to jostle someone and go "Ooh, Heisenberg!".

[HTRN]

For example, we know that if we observe something and not observe something, we get two different results.

This becomes readily obvious when boiling water.