PTSD

Cat in a box and all that...

Amended a bit after getting a comment from the (one) reader who hasn't really worked out how to use the pointer yet (point arrow at link, click)

Thanks to the fiendishly clever person at The Curator's Egg

Schödinger’s Cat in the Hat Box

When Heisenberg announced with pleasure,
“There are some things you cannot measure.
Not simultaneously at least.”
His irritating smile increased.

“The surer the momentum’s grown,
The less position will be known.”
“But that’s not all,” intruded Bohr.
(A name quite apt. I won’t say more)

“It’s observation perhaps
That makes the wave function collapse.
Until it does it’s all just smeared.
OK, I know it sounds quite weird.
But quantum physics can’t be knocked
-Its implications leave all shocked,
Except those, on the other hand,
Who simply do not understand.”

So Schrödinger, that studious gent
Devised a thought experiment.
A box, some acid and a jigger
Set off by a quantum trigger,
A cat, whose life or death would show
Emission had occurred or no.

You wouldn’t know until you looked
If that poor feline’s goose was cooked,
And it would be, or so he said,
Alive and at the same time dead.

Well so they say, but have no doubt
He actually tried it out,
And in a box set up like that
Securely locked his neighbour’s cat

That philosophical feline
Was to his fate quite unresigned
Though in the box he chose to linger
Mouthing curses at Schrödinger
Waiting for the Geiger’s chatter
Waiting for the phial to shatter
Waits till he can’t wait no more
(For waiting’s such a dreadful Bohr)

Until at last the lid was pried
Open and someone looked inside.
Relief! Survival! Best of men!
-But Erwin clamped it shut again.

And so the cat just lay there thinking
Tail just twitching, eyes unblinking,
“Werner says you can’t be knowing
Where I’m at AND how fast I’m going.

But I exactly know my speed
(Well, zero isn’t hard to read)
And that implies,” so thought the cat,
“Momentum’s nada - which means that
My position can’t be guessed
-There, I knew you’d be impressed
-So I don’t need to mess with locks
-It’s time to think outside the box.”

Well others here will understand
The consequences, though unplanned,
Of mixing up - that cunning devil!
-The micro with the macro level.

An hour passed. Erwin came back
And opened up the box a crack,
Then wider still and stood to stare
-The box was now completely bare!

And as he stuck his head inside
He caught a whiff of cyanide
And dropped down dead
(they say it hurts -I say it was his just deserts).

Thought our many readers would enjoy this.

ETA: The proper spelling on Priya's citation. She's never going to get published if she can't spell her sources--E

posted by Priya @ 11:37 AM