Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

Chapter 25
Collapse of Schrödinger’s Cat
Marvelous, what ideas the young people have these days. But I don’t
believe a word of it. (Einstein)
Had I known that we were not going to get rid of this damned quantum
jumping, I never would have involved myself in this business!
(Schrödinger)
Erwin Schrödinger formulated the basic equation of quantum mechanics
as a wave equation over a continuum named Schrödinger’s equation with
solutions named wave functions, in an outburst of creativity in 1925 in the
Alps together with a new girl friend. The question of the physical meaning
of the wave function came up as soon as more than one particle was involved,
that is already for the Helium atom with two electrons.
It was Niels Bohr with the help of Max Born, who took up the challenge to
give the wave function a physical meaning. Bohr said that the wave function
itself had no physical meaning, but that the wave function could “collapse”
into something with a physical meaning.
Schrödinger responded with a thought experiment with Schrödinger’s
Cat, a cat in box representing the wave function before collapse, a strange
unreal cat which is in a strange unreal combined state as both alive and
dead, followed by a ”collapse” into a real cat either alive or dead depending
on radioactive decay as the box is opened. Watch a presentation and try to
make sense of it (I can’t: Schrödinger’s objection with his cat experiment is
fine, but the refutation (by Bohr) is questionable).
The Schrödinger got so disappointed with the whole thing he had created,
and left quantum mechanics, or rather was kicked out by Bohr, who took over
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