Archive for the ‘ThinkGeek’ tag
The Schrödinger’s Cat Shirt You Didn’t Know You Wanted
A recent publication (requires access; discussed at a high level here) in Nature actually demonstrates quantum effects on a “large” object (still only 30 micrometers, but much larger than the single/handful of particles where it’s been demonstrated previously). Scientists were literally able to make a paddle simultaneously vibrate and not vibrate! This modern day Schrödinger’s Cat inspired me to look for something nerdy to commemorate this.
Behold: take Hello Kitty, and mix it with a little Schrödinger’s Cat, and put it on a shirt, and you get “Hello Schroddy”:
Interestingly, the shirt also comes with printable explanation cards so that you don’t have to explain it to the quantum-ly-challenged:
Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment. In quantum physics, a subatomic particle can exist in multiple states at once (imagine coming to a fork in the road and going both left and right). All of these possibilities combined is a thing called quantum superposition. When the particle is observed, however, it collapses into a single state, giving us the option of left or right not some of both left and right at the same time. To explain how difficult it is to conceive of this indeterminacy at a non-subatomic level, Schrödinger described a hypothetical experiment involving a cat. He puts the cat in an opaque box so that the cat cannot be observed. Also in the box is a flask of poisonous gas and a radioactive substance. The radioactive substance controls the flask so that when an atom decays, the gas is released. At any given moment, then, from outside the box, the cat is in a state of indeterminacy. From a theoretical perspective, it’s both alive and dead at the same time… until we open the box.
No actual cats were harmed in this experiment. Many theoretical physicists, however, were.
Now, who’s the lucky lady who’s going to receive one of these from you, huh?
(ThinkGeek link; comes in pink in many sizes, $18.99)
Paper: O’Connell, A. D., et al. “Quantum ground state and single-phonon control of a mechanical resonator.” Nature. Mar 17 2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature08967