Schrodinger's Cat

[Steve Bates]

No: HPFGUIDX 1329

Wow, Brooks, that was an excellent explanation.  I was going to post 
the original description of the experiment according to Schrodinger, 
and I still am, but you pretty much covered everything:

"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases.  A cat is penned up in a 
steel chamber, along with the following diabolical 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 one 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 first atomic decay would have 
poisoned it.  The Psi function for the entire system would express 
this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the 
expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts."