Schrodinger vs Heisenberg

 

Schrodinger's cat is pradox related to Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics Which says that we can not explain the state of particle (cat) if we are not observing it, when we are not observing it particles remains in all the possible states it can. (dead and alive both, in case of cat) as we observes the particle wave function of the particle collapses and it chooses any one state from all the possible states.

The paradox here is How can a cat be dead and also remain alive at the same time.

While heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that we can not measure Exact position and velocity of particle at the same instant there will always be uncertainty in measuring postion of particle if it has got some momentum and vice versa.

Schrödinger's Cat: First of all Schrodinger did not have any cat on which he was doing some experiments. Basically, its a case to demonstrate some of the weird explanations of Quantum Mechanics. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device: in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it.

Motivation Behind: Schrödinger described how one could, in principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system by making it dependent on a quantum particle that was in a superposition. In his case the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state is observed. He intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.

EPR article: (Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935) The EPR article highlighted the strange nature of quantum superpositions, in which a quantum system such as an atom or photon can exist as a combination of multiple states corresponding to different possible outcomes.

The most mischievous thing humans have ever met with is time. We are not made to understand it by simple logics and that’s confuses us every-time we deal with it.

My Views: I think Quantum Mechanics simply wants to say that “I don’t know”. Everything on a quantum level is so uncertain that it says everything is possible. It means, there is a possibility, though infinitesimally small, that you will convert into elephant at the end of this article. The main reason of this uncertainty is time. Though, we talk about multi-dimentions, but we don’t know much about 4th dimention, i.e., time. We regularly use it in our day to day physics and generate results but still exact behavior of time is not know. And it effects the results of Quantum Mechanics. Because of we don’t know the exact time of the radioactive emission, we can’t say if the cat is alive or dead. So, she is in both states. At the moment we observer, we nullify the effect of time, because we know if emission has taken place or not, so we can exactly say if the cat is alive or not.

Above example can explain our confusion more preciously. Just because we can see through the glass, its easy for us to predict whether the plates are broken or not and further, how many plates will be broken if we open the door.

To compare Schrodinger to Heisenberg:

T

he Schrödinger's cat thought experiment illustrates the bizarre consequences of describing macroscopic systems like cats in strict quantum mechanical terms: you can get strange things like a state that's a superposition of a live cat and a dead cat.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, on the other hand, specifies limits to which complementary physical quantities such as position and momentum can be simultaneously determined.