(More physics: The Physics of Waterslides.)
Until the box is opened, an observer doesn't know whether the cat is alive or dead-because the cat's fate is intrinsically tied to whether or not the atom has decayed and the cat would, as Schrödinger put it, be "living and dead. Physicists say the atom exists in a state known as a superposition-both decayed and not decayed at the same time. The radioactive decay is a random process, and there is no way to predict when it will happen. When the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger detects it and triggers the hammer to release the poison, which subsequently kills the cat. The Nobel prize-winning physicist would have turned 126 years old on Monday and to celebrate, Google honored his birth with a cat-themed Doodle, which pays tribute to the paradox Schrödinger proposed in 1935 in the following theoretical experiment.Ī cat is placed in a steel box along with a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, a hammer, and a radioactive substance. His feline paradox thought experiment has become a pop culture staple, but it was Erwin Schrödinger's work in quantum mechanics that cemented his status within the world of physics.
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