Schrodinger's Cat

Our faculty is having a funwalk tomorrow, and as a school (School of Physics) we go as a group, and have T-shirts designed. I was asked to find some design for the tshirt. Well, I have kind of had this idea in my mind for the past few months that Schrodinger's Cat would make for a great physics themed t-shirt. I spent a bit of time trawling the internet for some ideas, and some really nice pictures popped up. Anyway, it got me to thinking, how many people actually know the story behind  the unfortunate feline companion of Erwin Schrodinger.

Erwin Schrodinger was a big player in the early development of quantum mechanics, and is responsible for providing the world with Schrodinger's Equation, which allows one to determine the time evolution of quantum states. I'll say no more about that. One of the underlying concepts in quatum mechanics is the one of probability, namely that nothing is certain. Our everyday understanding of how the world works, does not apply in the realm of quantum mechanics. For instance, if I drop a glass full of red wine onto the floor (shame on me), then we all expect that that glass would hit the floor, and spill. But, quantum mechanics predicts that there is a small chance of the glass passing right through the floor, and landing in the basement (either result is bad for me though).

Okay, so back to Schrodinger's Cat. Schrodinger proposed a thought experiment (meaning that he only conducted the experiment in his mind).  For this experiment, one would place a cat in a box, with a sealed vial of poison, and seal the box. The vial of poison is set to release its contents at an undetermined time. So, without opening the box, one has no way of knowing whether the cat is alive or dead. And so we can think of the cat as both alive and dead. Weird, but this is the kind of stuff that quantum mechanics deals with. It is a very complex field.

Anyway, this brings me to my tshirt design idea. I have attached the picture, which I think is from an episode of Big Bang Theory. Also, I should point out that the powers that be opted for a different design, but oh well. Now that you know where it comes from, you can see that it is a rather clever design.