There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

------Hamlet, Shakespeare

PLEASE NOTE: This is a thought experiment and is not, nor will it ever be possible to be carried out. No animals were or will be hurt by this experiment. The experiment was designed to illustrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation.

Schrodinger's cat experiment is purely a thought experiment. Schrodinger envisioned a box that could be perfectly sealed so that no measurements may be made on its contents. In the box Schrodinger placed a cat. Along with the cat an electron is placed in the box(in the original experiment Schrodinger used a radioactive isotope with a half-life but the electron is easier to understand) and aloud it to roam free. Along with the electron their is an electron detector that is hooked up to a nerve gas release switch.

The experiment is run as follows. After the electron is aloud to roam free, the box is split in half by a panel. In one half of the box their is the cat and the nerve gas. In the other half their is empty space. Since we are uncertain about the position of the electron by the uncertainty principle their is now a fifty-fifty chance that the electron is in either halves of the box. Commonsense says their are now two possibilities for the state of the cat. The electron is in the cats half of the box and electron detector detects it causing the nerve gas to be released. The nerve gas is released and kills the cat. The other option is that the electron is in the other half of the box and the cat is alive. According to commonsense the cat is either dead or alive. But according to Schrodinger's wave equation the electron exists in a superposition of states. Therefore, the electron is in both halves of the box until it is observed and the wave function collapses to make it exist in a real position. This is similar to a photon going through both slits at once. As a consequence of this the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Once the box is unsealed and the QMs look in, the wave function collapses causing the cat to exist in one of the two states. The cat becomes either dead or alive with fifty percent probability for each only when it is observed and the wave function is collapsed.

It was idea that a cat could be both dead and alive at once that caused Schrodinger to question the current interpretation of what quantum mechanics means. Even more disturbing than a cat that is both dead and alive is the idea that reality is generated by observation. That without an observer the universe would never become real because there would be nothing to collapses the wave functions that make it up. There is nothing either dead or alive, but thinking makes it so. The interpretation that Schrodinger was questioning is the Copenhagen Interpretation.