HOME | DD

Description
...ou comment être mort et vivant à la fois. I know, it really looks like Alice in Wonderland's cheshire cat! it's in fact an illustration for our file on schrödinger's cat for school. If you do not know the principle :A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. a legend tells that schrödinger has been inspired by the cheshire cat, who disappears and appears unceasingly! it looks really better in real it's a shame...

Description
...ou comment être mort et vivant à la fois. I know, it really looks like Alice in Wonderland's cheshire cat! it's in fact an illustration for our file on schrödinger's cat for school. If you do not know the principle :A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. a legend tells that schrödinger has been inspired by the cheshire cat, who disappears and appears unceasingly! it looks really better in real it's a shame...