Richard Meic discussing "Cat in the Box"
with Nick Douglas...
 RM> You may be correct, it likely doesn't matter, but for the sake of
 RM> blabing I feel that we know what the radio active substance (radium, I
 RM> believe, was proposed for the hypothetical experiment) does to a living
 RM> creature, and we know how long it _should_ take for the cat to die of
 RM> radiation poisoning under such circumstances.
 RM> So, I think it would be
 RM> safe to estimate when the cat should die and add another five minutes,
 RM> and say " well the cat is dead", and then open the box to see the cat
 RM> being quite dead. Besides, all one really had to do is listen for the
 RM> cat howling in pain to subside to conclude that the cat is in fact 
 RM> dead,... ... then you could pull out that book called "101 Uses For A
 RM> Dead Cat", and have fun for few hours after the experiment.  Not much 
 RM> uncertainty there, IMO.
Is this meant to be serious? I hope for your sake that it isn't because if it 
is it means you've totally misunderstood what the "cat in a box" scenario is 
all about and what the discussion of this is all for.
The box is a hypothetical box. The cat is a hypothetical cat. The 
experimental hypothesis is what Einstein liked to call a "thought 
experiment". We are not interested in a treatise on how the cat dies within 
the box IF the vial of poison is released by the decay of a radioactive 
isotope. It is nothing to do with that whatsoever.
The whole point of this thought experiment is as an an analogy to what 
happens in the quantum world and to discuss the implications of "observing" 
quantum behaviour and how that behaviour is actually affected by our 
"observations" of it.
If you really want to learn about this then I suggest reading something about 
it. "In Search of Schrödinger's Cat" by John Gribben (ISBN 0-552-12555-5 
Black Swan) is a good non-technical place to start.
    Relatif Tuinn
... "Junior?", said MaDdErS & reached for the reset button.
--- Spot 1.3a #1413
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