Schrödinger’s Multipurpose Analogy

It’s somehow both trite and astute at the same time!

Erwin Schrödinger was a physicist whose work won him the coveted Nobel prize. His Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation which allows you to calculate the wave function in a quantum mechanical system and how it dynamically changes over time. Unless you’re a whole lot more familiar with quantum physics than the average citizen, the previous sentence probably strikes you as meaningless jargon, but you don’t actually have to decipher it. Groundbreaking as his dedication to quantum mechanics may have been, the biggest impact he had upon our culture came through a simple thought experiment he shared with Albert Einstein. It involves a cat which might be alive and might be dead, but since we can’t know for sure, we sort of have to think of as being both. Or neither. This famous feline may wear overtones of a ghost or zombie about it, but you can’t argue that it doesn’t have legs, because Schrödinger’s cat, or at least the idea of it, has certainly gotten around.

In 1935, quantum physics was trying to come to grips with several counterintuitive findings and ideas. Part of it started way back in 1801, when Thomas Young tried to determine whether or not light was a wave or a particle. His famous double-slit experiment ended up showing us that when you run…