alt Hacker NewsI am sure others will say it better, but the cat-in-the-box experiment is a shockingly bad metaphor for the idea behind quantum states and observer effect.
I will commit the first sin, by declaring without fear of contradiction the cat actually IS either alive or dead. it is not in a superposition of states. What is unknown is our knowledge of the state, and what collapses is that uncertainty.
If you shift this to the particle, not the cat, what changes? because if very much changes, my first comment about the unsuitability of the metaphor is upheld, and if very little changes, my comment has been disproven.
It would be clear I am neither a physicist nor a logician.
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There are various theories about what's actually happening in quantum mechanics. Some theories have hidden variables, in which case the issue is simply one of measurement (i.e. there really is an "objectively correct" value, but it only looks to us like there isn't).[0] However, this is not known to be the case, and many theories really do claim that position and momentum fundamentally cannot both be well-defined at once. (The "default" Copenhagen interpretation is in the latter camp; AFAIK it's convenient in practice, and as a result it's implicitly assumed in introductory QM classes.)
[0] Well, and the hidden variables are non-local, which is a whole 'nother can of highly non-intuitive worms.
Along similar lines, the double-slit experiment, seems simple. Two slits let light though and you get bands where they constructively or destructively interfere, just like waves.
However I still find it crazy that when you slow down the laser and one photon at a time goes through either slit you still get the bands. Which begs the question, what exactly is it constructively or destructively interfering with?
Still seems like there's much to be learned about the quantum world, gravity, and things like dark energy vs MOND.
Well you are in luck because that was the point of Schroedingers cat; it was constructed to show the impossibly odd implications of quantum mechanics.
From the wikipedia page: “This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 in a discussion with Albert Einstein to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg's philosophical views on quantum mechanics.”