Solution to Schrödinger's Cat

There is a new thought in the universe, and two more states to the Schrödinger Cat in the Box. So here is an update this August 3rd 2005, on the solution below. And, I wonder if the same 700 visitors will read this as well?

There are many ways to determine the state of  Schrödinger's  Cat as  either alive or dead or in the box.

Simple Sound Test

If you were a small child, and your father was a doctor, then you would take a stethoscope and place it on the box. Then you would note what you hear.

You would hear the ticking of the Geiger counter for one thing. Then as you patiently listen, you would eventually hear the heartbeat of the cat. You know that you did not place a dead cat in the box, so it would take some time for the cat to, well keel over from radiation poisoning. Unless you really placed a lot of uranium in the box. And, in that case there would be no experiment because your cat would have died, before you closed the box.

Over time, the cat's heart beat would begin to slow down, or maybe speed up, depending on the effects of the radiation on the cat's metabolism. As long as you hear the heartbeat, the cat is alive. And when it stops, well you know that answer, I think.

Now being that most scientist, and egotist, want to search for a more elegant solution, and still use sound, you can place the box in an iconic chamber (sound proof room). The same kind of rooms we think we need to test speakers for stereo buffs, who have a lot of money, but can't really hear good. Therefore they look at the specs and think that this must be a good speaker. But I diverge.

Now we can pick and plot all of the sounds on the computer screen, with great accuracy. We might even be able to create a plot of the cat scratching on the side of the box. Having identified this, we could then say that the cat is dead when the scratching stops. But, then again, the cat might have just went to sleep for awhile, to wait for us to let it out of the box, so it can go back to its lovely spot on the window sill.

Based on this theory, it is definitely more accurate to plot the sound and energy levels of the cats heartbeat. With a really sophisticated sound room and computer system, you could probably hear the flow of the cat's blood through its vains. This would give you a higher degree of accuracy, if you pre-suppose that the cat is alive as long as it is moving, no matter how minimal that movement might be.

A Cat In Heat

The next most simplest way is to use thermodynamics. A really metaphysical method that would make even the hardest set physicist or mathematician cry.

Why thermodynamics?

Well, it really gives you two diametric parameters that unequivocally prove the state of the cat's life functions.

All things being equal, and they are because I just stated the fact, the cat will metabolize and its body will generate heat. This heat will raise the temperature of the cats little box. Using thermo couples, or just placing your hand on the box, allows you to sense the giving or release of that heat from the box, because of the cats body temperature. Ergo, the cat is alive.

Now, the little trick, that tells you the Geiger counter really did trigger from the uranium and the cat has now expired. The cat stops producing heat. And, thermodynamically we should suppose that the cat's body is now going to cool down, or take heat from its environment as it deteriorates inside of the box. Thermodynamics dictates, as we humans understand it, that the thermocouples will sense the box drawing heat, cooling, down. The cat has expired, because the thermal source has now become a thermal heatsink.

Conclusion

Well, actually, this is not a conclusion. It is simply a knot of thought as I finish getting this page fashioned for easy navigation, as I know it.

I really came up with the thermal idea first. It was so simple and elegant, that I needed to share it with the little world that reads my web pages, and keep it for quick reference, when I want to properly spell this guy's name again. Years ago, I read Robert Glick's book Chaos, which is somewhere in the garage and I will find it later, and was fascinated by this. I even used it in one of my theses papers.

But, it took me so long to fire up the laptop (my battery is dead, no heat, so I needed to find the power cord and then a power source), then remember how to get to my website after I realized that I never used this laptop that I built to access my website, so there were passwords to remember and urls to find. And finally, I needed to remember where my Cez's Letters of No Importance actually resided on my site.

That was such a long time, that I came up with the sound theory, and so I added that one first, because I would have forgotten it much quicker than the thermodynamics theory. Besides it is not every day, that I talk about iconic chambers.

Created on 08/03/2005 and read