Question: I really liked your joke about Schrodingers cat, i sort of know what it is but could you tell me more about what it is meant to be proving/ what the point of it is?

Jess Bean answered on 18 Jun 2013:

Haha I’m glad you liked it! You clearly have a very good sense of humour!

So the Schrödinger’s cat story is a ‘thought experiment’ that was thought up by Erwin Schrödinger to explain a paradox found in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the science of the smallest things that make up the universe, smaller than atoms.

In normal chemistry, atoms and chemicals behave exactly how we expect them to. They go where we calculate they will go, at a speed we can measure. The problem occurs when you look closer at atoms, to the particles that make up atoms (atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons) as well as other things such as light. With these particles they behave peculiarly – namely sometimes we don’t know exactly what they are doing or where they are. Schrödinger’s cat aimed to explain this. It goes something like this:

“Imagine a cat, a box of poison and a piece of radioactive metal all in a sealed box. The radioactive metal can decay at any time, and if it decays it will release the poison, killing the cat. The problem is, the box is sealed so we don’t know if the cat is dead or alive; we in fact have to act like it is both alive and dead at the same time – it only becomes one or the other if the box is opened.”

Now linking this back to science, some particles that make up atoms act exactly like a cat. If you look for it (open the box) it will be there or it won’t be there, but if you don’t look at it (close the box) everything’s still a bit fuzzy. It’s very confusing, even for university students! (and me as well) but it’s the nature of the science of really small particles. It’s a very peculiar world that’s all a bit topsy turvy.