Theories in Physics: Quantum Mechanics - Schrödinger's Cat

Modern day physics has found that there are two different worlds in which physics is observed. The first of these worlds is called Classical Mechanics, and it is what we observe in our day to day lives. For example, if you were throwing a basketball at a hoop, you would also see it go through the hoop (if you were good at basketball) and then fall to the ground underneath the basket. The world of Classical Mechanics in comparison to the second world deals with objects that are visible to the naked human eye. The second world observed in physics follows the properties of Quantum Mechanics, which are aimed at explaining changes and movements in little components of matter such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. This world is considered to be very strange in comparison to the world of Classical Mechanics and is best explained by an equally strange example of Schrödinger’s Cat.

The example is as follows, imagine that there is a cat that has been placed in a box with a stick of dynamite. This box has a fifty percent chance of blowing up if the lid is closed, but we won’t know if the dynamite exploded until we reopen the box and check inside, and thereby won’t know if the cat is alive or deceased. Within quantum physics, there is a period of time before we reopen the box that the cat is in a superposition state. This means that to our knowledge the cat is neither alive nor dead because we don’t know whether the dynamite has exploded or not. This example is paralleled to the ability of electrons that are considered to orbit protons in the quantum realm; however, the electrons don’t actually orbit the atom but more so exist around it in many places, and are likely to appear in some places more times than others. We won’t know where the electron actually is however until we actually discover its exact position at an exact moment.

Schrödinger’s Cat example opens the door to a phenomenon known as Quantum Entanglement that will be discussed in the second part of Quantum Mechanics.

Picture Source: i-phi.org