background preloader

Curiosities

Facebook Twitter

Schrödinger's cat. Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other. Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.[1] It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects.

Origin and motivation[edit] Real-size cat figure in the garden of Huttenstrasse 9, Zurich, where Erwin Schrödinger lived 1921 – 1926. Schrödinger wrote:[1][10] Visual Dictionary Online. Pronunciator - Learn to Speak 60 Languages - 100% Free. BEFORE THEY PASS AWAY. Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies. 100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars. While burying yourself in the stacks at the library is one way to get some serious research done, with today’s technology you can do quite a bit of useful searching before you ever set foot inside a library. Undergraduates and grad students alike will appreciate the usefulness of these search engines that allow them to find books, journal articles and even primary source material for whatever kind of research they’re working on and that return only serious, academic results so time isn’t wasted on unprofessional resources.

Note: Visit our updated list for the latest in academic search engines. General Start off your research with one of these more general academic search engines. Intute: Use this website’s search tools to find the best and most reliable sites to start your research. Meta Search Want to search it all at once? Dogpile: Search Google, Yahoo, Bing and more at once with this great search engine. Databases and Archives Books and Journals Science Math and Technology Social Science. Khan Academy.

Charts