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Schrödinger's cat

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. 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. The thought experiment[edit] Schrödinger wrote:[1][10] One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Related:  Cats

Crypt of Civilization Crypt of Civilization interior contents The Crypt of Civilization is a sealed airtight chamber located at Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia, in Metro Atlanta. The crypt consists of preserved artifacts scheduled to be opened in the year AD 8113.[1][2] The 1990 Guinness Book of World Records cites the crypt as the "first successful attempt to bury a record of this culture for any future inhabitants or visitors to the planet Earth Beginnings[edit] Thornwell Jacobs (1877–1956), referred to as "the father of the modern time capsule", claims to be the first in modern times to conceive the idea of consciously preserving man-made objects for posterity by placing them in a sealed repository.[1][3][5][6][7] Jacobs's inspiration for the project was sparked by the Egyptian pyramid and tomb openings in the 1920s. Construction[edit] The room is 20 feet (6 m) long, 10 feet (3 m) high and 10 feet (3 m) wide. Artifacts[edit] Promotion[edit] After sealing[edit] See also[edit] References[edit]

Falling cat problem A falling cat modeled as two independently rotating parts turns around while maintaining zero net angular momentum The falling cat problem consists of explaining the underlying physics behind the common observation of the cat righting reflex: how a free-falling cat can turn itself right-side-up as it falls, no matter which way up it was initially, without violating the law of conservation of angular momentum. Although somewhat amusing, and trivial to pose, the solution of the problem is not as straightforward as its statement would suggest. The apparent contradiction with the law of conservation of angular momentum is resolved because the cat is not a rigid body, but instead is permitted to change its shape during the fall. The behavior of the cat is thus typical of the mechanics of deformable bodies. See also[edit] References[edit] Arabyan, A; Tsai, D. (1998), "A distributed control model for the air-righting reflex of a cat", Biol. Further reading[edit]

List of common misconceptions From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This incomplete list is not intended to be exhaustive. This list corrects erroneous beliefs that are currently widely held about notable topics. Each misconception and the corresponding facts have been discussed in published literature. Note that each entry is formatted as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. Arts and culture Food and cooking Roll-style Western sushi. Searing meat does not "seal in" moisture, and in fact may actually cause meat to lose moisture. Legislation and crime Literature The Harry Potter books, though they have broken children's book publishing records, have not led to an increase in reading among children or adults, nor slowed the ongoing overall decline in book purchases by Americans, and children who did read the Harry Potter books were not more likely to go on to read more outside of the fantasy and mystery genres.[21][22][23][24] Music Religion Hebrew Bible Buddhism Christianity Islam Sports

Kowloon Walled City History[edit] Military outpost[edit] Lung Tsun Stone Bridge and Lung Tsun Pavilion (Pavilion for Greeting Officials) of Kowloon Walled City in 1898. The history of the Walled City can be traced back to the Song Dynasty (960–1279), when an outpost was set up to manage the trade of salt. 1915 map of the Hong Kong region with the Kowloon Walled City listed as "Chinese Town" at the upper right-hand corner. Though the British claimed ownership of the Walled City, they did little with it over the following few decades. Urban settlement[edit] Here, prostitutes installed themselves on one side of the street, while a priest preached and handed out powdered milk to the poor on the other; social workers gave guidance, while drug addicts squatted under the stairs getting high; what were children's games centres by day became strip show venues by night. —Leung Ping Kwan, City of Darkness, p. 120[3] After Japan's surrender, China announced its intent to reclaim its rights to the Walled City. Culture[edit]

Cat physics – and we are not making this up Cats may skulk, and cats may fall – but no matter what they do, cats must obey the laws of physics. Scientists have tried repeatedly to figure out how they manage to do it. At the extreme, physicists analysed what happens to a dropped cat. That's a cat in free-fall, a cat hurtling earthwards with nothing but kitty cunning to keep it from crashing. In 1969, TR Kane and MP Scher of Stanford University, in California, published a monograph called A Dynamical Explanation of the Falling Cat Phenomenon. It remains one of the few studies about cats ever published in the International Journal of Solids and Structures. "It is well known that falling cats usually land on their feet and, moreover, that they can manage to do so even if released from complete rest while upside-down … numerous attempts have been made to discover a relatively simple mechanical system whose motion, when proceeding in accordance with the laws of dynamics, possesses the salient features of the motion of the falling cat.

The Effects Of Cannabis On A Web-Based Lifestyle web of a spider on LSD web of a spider on mescaline web of a spider on hashish web of a spider on caffeine Just Say No: web of a drug-naïve spider see Spider Communication: Mechanisms and Ecological Significance Edited by Peter N.Witt & Jerome S. e-mail:info@cannabis.net LSDHOME HashishCaffeineCannabisMescalineWasted! one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen

Johann Hari: The myth of the panicking disaster victim - Johann Hari, Commentators The same predictions are made about every disaster – that once the lid of a tightly policed civilization is knocked off for a second, humans will become beasts. But the opposite is the case. It sounds grotesque to say we should see reasons for hope as we watch in real time while the earth is shaken six inches on its axis, tsunamis roar, and nuclear power stations teeter on meltdown. But it is true. The evidence gathered over centuries of disasters, natural and man-made, is overwhelming. On 18 April 1906, San Francisco was levelled by an earthquake. In San Francisco that week, the city's plumbers began – unpaid – to fix the broken pipes, one by one. They hated what had happened, but loved what they had become. This information is essential for knowing how to respond to disasters. In a disaster, very few people are on-yer-bike individualists grabbing for themselves, and they are regarded as incomprehensible by everybody else. This raises an obvious question.

If my Pussy smells like Tuna, why doesn't my Cat eat me out? It's a legitimate question, don't you think? I recently tickled my kitty in front of my cat to answer this question; a question every girl who has ever been mistaken for a fish and chip shop by a blind man has pondered, but has been afraid to ask. Initially I felt guilty about my little experiment, but curiosity won hands down—or possibly fingers in—and I was quickly so horny I didn't really give a bugger. At first my cat was none the wiser as I slyly slid out of my slightly damp knickers beneath the sheets and reached up for my vibrator. At first I was reluctant to turn it on as Lulu was literally six inches from my waist, so why draw attention to what I was doing if I didn't have to, right? Well I had to—this was a scientific experiment, remember? Meanwhile my inquisitive moggie was beginning to suspect something sinister was going on—or possibly round and round— beneath the twitching sheets. She probably wondered what all that grunting was about.

Largest genome on Earth | BioXplorer Which species has the largest genome? Humans? No… Ahhh, I remember the polyploidy was a process observed in higher plants. The flower has the unbelievable 149 billion base pairs, which is about 50 times the size of a human genome and makes it the owner of the largest genome ever found (till now!). Just for comparison, the smallest known genome of an eukaryote is that of a mammalian parasite known as Encephalitozoon intestinalis – 2.25 million base pairs. Besides the huge amount of information coded, to have the largest genome tend to be a liability – plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions—and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome. The largest genome study is revealed in a paper in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.

Polish institute classifies cats as alien invasive species | AP News WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A respected Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an “invasive alien species,” citing the damage they cause to birds and other wildlife. Some cat lovers have reacted emotionally to this month’s decision and put the key scientist behind it on the defensive. Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences, wasn’t prepared for the disapproving public response when he entered “Felis catus,” the scientific name for the common house cat, into a national database run by the academy’s Institute of Nature Conservation. The database already had 1,786 other species listed with no objections, Solarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill. The criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species, “are 100% met by the cat,” he said.

Brains of Phonetics Experts Differ From Those of General Public 6 Terrifying Ways Crows Are Way Smarter Than You Think Mankind has a long and checkered past with crows and ravens: They have been feared as symbols of death, because they're all black and scary, revered as creators of the world because, well, it was either them or the seagulls, and worshiped as trickster gods, because of their baffling intelligence. Intelligent enough, in fact, for us to start worrying ... #6. They Can Remember Your Face Next time you see a group of crows, look closely. OK, so the scientists weren't just playing out horror movie fantasies -- they were testing whether the crows could recognize human faces or not. In case you think they were just telling each other "get the guy with the mask," they weren't: The test was repeated with multiple people wearing multiple masks, and without fail, the crows left the masked men who hadn't messed with them alone, but went murder-crazy on the mask that had been worn while messing with them. "Wow. Oh, and also none of the scientists were ever seen again. #5. #4. One.

Spiders Fleeing Floods Build Mosquito Buffet in Trees Photo: Russell Watkins / DFID When heavy rains caused rivers to overflow and flood parts of Pakistan last year, it set into motion a surprisingly complex chain of events that scientists are only now beginning to understand -- and which may have ultimately saved countless human lives. As waters began to rise, thousands of spiders sought refuge in tall trees, cluttering the leaves and branches with their webs in a manner reminiscent of cotton-candy. That, of course, is just the beginning of the story. >> WATCH SLIDESHOW: 10 of the World's Weirdest Spiders In the heavily flooded region of Sindh, Pakistan, these spider-web laden trees seems to have been quite effective at catching insects. According to New Scientist, people living in nearby subsequently experienced a significant drop in the number of mosquitoes -- likely reducing the risk of insect-borne diseases, like malaria, and possibly saving the lives of local residents. From New Scientist :

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