How Does Schrodinger's Cat is Nonsense. Always was. Work?

Schrodinger’s Cat is like saying your toy is both inside and outside the box at the same time, but that doesn’t make sense if you just open it up.

Schrodinger’s Cat is a story about a cat in a box with some tricky stuff. People think the cat is both alive and dead until someone opens the box. But that's not how real life works!

The Problem With the Story

Imagine your favorite snack is hidden under a cup. You don’t know if it’s there or not, but that doesn’t mean it's both there and not there at the same time! It just means you haven't looked yet.

The story makes things sound weird and mysterious, like magic, but it’s really just a fun idea to help people understand something about tiny particles. The cat isn’t actually alive and dead, it's either one or the other. We just don’t know which until we check!

So Schrodinger’s Cat is more like a silly riddle than real science, and that makes it nonsense!

Take the quiz →

Examples

  1. A cat is locked in a box with a radioactive atom, a vial of poison, and a hammer. If the atom decays, the hammer drops, breaking the vial and killing the cat.
  2. The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box to check.
  3. It’s like being told your sandwich is both toasted and not toasted at the same time.

Ask a question

See also

Discussion

Recent activity