Wednesday, 24 January 2007

Schrodinger's Cat

Ok the other day I was standing in the kitchen cooking dinner for the family and looking out the window I could see our cat lying on the concrete by the washing line, and then looking again i could see another very similar cat lying on top of the compost bin. Looking closely I could not make out any differences between them, nor on either cat could I see our cats bright yellow refelective collar (which proves very usefull on an all black cat at night).

To this day I have never seen another lithe black cat in the neighbourhood, and our cat has never been what you would call friendly to other cats (many late night fights are started below our bedroom window).

My wife went down to see the cats and by the time she had gone down the stairs to the yard the cat by the washing line had disappeared and our cat was lying relaxed on the compost bin.

Maybe what I was seeing was the famous Schrodinger's cat, well not exactly (since that had to do with whether the cat in the box was alive or not) but certainly the parallels to quantum mechanics are abound.

Obviously the "catfunction" was a superposition of two states and when my wife went out to make an "observation" the catfunction collapsed to the compost bin state.

Maybe? Or could it be something else?

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