Schroedinger's cat

The first question of course is whether Erwin the Schrödinger was a cat lover or a cat hater. Or neither (then why'd he choose a cat?). I don't know the answer to that question (those questions). Some people might say, "Does it matter?" in a rather irritated voice, like Judith at the dinner table when Larry mentions that their next door neighbor, Mr. Brandt, is mowing part of their yard. Well, no, it doesn't matter!  But I'd still like to know.

Schrödinger did mention in his description of setting up the thought experiment that the equipment involved "must be secured against direct interference by the cat," which he described as "penned up in a steel chamber” with a flask of hydrocyanic acid that would be broken by a hammer released by a mechanical relay switch activated by the radioactive decay of a nucleus that is specified to have an equal probability of decaying or not decaying in one hour.

At the end of the hour, the experimenter looks inside the steel box, and by doing so determines if the cat is dead or alive.  During the hour before the box is opened, however, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, the cat is both dead and alive, because the wavefunction (or state vector) of the atomic nucleus has equal components of decayed-state and non-decayed state and only by a measurement is the wavefunction put into either one state or the other.  Thus only by a measurement is the cat put in one state or the other.

The semantics gets a little tricky, though, when you consider that looking in the box is more of an observation than a measurement. Can you say what the difference between an observation and a measurement actually is? Looking at your speedometer while you're driving, for instance, or weighing yourself.  You're looking at a numerical reading produced by an instrument.  More about all that later!

Trulock's Dog

Happy Valentine's Day to you, too.

In June I visited my brother Arch in Birmingham in order to get a painting of mine that I now have room to put up, although I haven't yet put it up.  I returned not only with the painting but with a pretty big analog TV, a DVD player, my banjo, and a dog named Jessie.  She's four and a half approximately.

I let her run free at the Bayou Bartholomew trail if nobody else is there, which is most of the time, and at the farm.  She doesn't like the sound of the .22 rifle and wants to get back in the car if I get it out, so I go on separate outings at the farm, either with Jessie or with the gun.
She's learned to come back at just the time I'm getting to the end of the bayou trail (about a 30 minute walk), but also likes to run up from behind me and pass me several times while I'm on the trail, which makes me whoop and holler* and start running myself if I'm not already.  The bayou trail is a good place for whooping and hollering, if nobody else is there, which is most ...yeh, I said that already, but sometimes of course people will arrive after me and I won't know they're on the trail, which is a one and three-fourths mile loop, so I've encountered people before who no doubt have heard me singing or at least making semi-musical-type noises.  Jessie's goal is to find something to chase, and I saw her once trying to catch up with a deer in the woods (it's all woods along the trail).  First  I saw the deer, a medium-sized doe, running about 50 yards away from me, then turning my head from the direction she came, I saw Jessie following at top speed (not fast enough) looking a little like a deer herself, at least colorwise.       *a sort of maniacal laughter