Schroedinger's Cat as Explained by My Wife

It is very interesting what we can learn from others when we take the time to listen to them. Just last night, as we drove home from town, I started a conversation about Schrodinger's Cat with my wife who had never heard of the idea before. If you've never heard of Schrodinger or his cat, let me explain them to you.

Erwin Schrodinger was a quantum physicist who, in 1935, dreamed up a paradox to explain the potential positions of subatomic particles. This paradox, referred to as "Schrodinger's Cat", places a healthy cat into a steel box. Along with the feline, Schrodinger placed a vile of poison, a Geiger counter, a hammer, and radioactive material. When the radioactive material decays, the Geiger counter triggers the hammer to fall, breaking the vile and releasing the poison, consequently killing the unsuspecting cat.

An important variable in this scenario is the atomic decay of the radioactive material. It happens randomly. So, once the lid is closed on the cat, there is no verifiable way of knowing whether the cat is alive or dead except to open the lid and observe the cat. In this way, Erwin Schrodinger said that the cat would be stuck in a superposition of being alive and dead at the same time.

As we drove home, I explained the paradox of Schrodinger's Cat to my wife, not really expecting her to understand what I was talking about. But when I finished my lecture and asked her what she thought about it, if anything, she created an analogy to simplify the paradox better than I could do.

"So, it's like one of those choose your own adventure books?" she asked. "I mean, there's one book that has alternate plots that exist together. But as we read the book and decide which pages to turn to when given the choice, we create a different story each time. That's what it sounds like to me."

Until that point, I didn't concretely understand what I was condescendingly trying to explain to my wife. But after taking the time to listen to her, a cosmetologist and craft blogger, she taught me about what it was I was trying to make sense out of myself.