IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS COLIN. Well, in fact, there were four people debating Schrödinger’s Cat in the basement of a school. If this sounds like the set up for a bad joke, that’s because it is.

For those who don’t know, the premise behind Schrödinger’s Cat is basically that this guy named Schrodinger had way too many beers and decided to screw up the whole way the world thought.

In 1935 Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in QM1. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox.

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a blurred model'' for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

We know that superposition of possible outcomes must exist simultaneously at a microscopic level because we can observe interference effects from these. We know (at least most of us know) that the cat in the box is dead, alive or dying and not in a smeared out state between the alternatives. When and how does the model of many microscopic possibilities resolve itself into a particular macroscopic state? When and how does the fog bank of microscopic possibilities transform itself to the blurred picture we have of a definite macroscopic state. That is the measurement problem and Schrödinger's cat is a simple and elegant explanations of that problem. )

So, in the basement of our high school’s foreign language building, in a room which we jokingly call the Steam Distribution Ventilation and Asbestos Storage Chambre, four high school boys were discussing Schrodinger’s Cat. Colin desperately tried to grasp what I was telling him. But he thinks at a very high level, and while the other three were debating the whole experiment in general, he had moved on. Having grasped the poison and the cat dying or living, he had a different question.

“What about the cat?”

All other conversation stops. Everyone looks at Colin with wondering eyes.

“What about the cat?” I ask.

“The cat!” Colin replies, as if this was an answer, “what about it? Doesn’t it know if it’s living or dead?”

All other conversation remains quite still.

“The cat is dead if it dies. It does not matter what happens to the box. You could light the box on fire and not effect the outcome. Well, if the cat was alive it would effect the outcome. But otherwise…”

Suddenly, the room was in utter panic. Our dear friend Dave screamed, “All that I have known is forever lost!” and fell with a loud resounding thud on the floor like a harpooned whale (“Meeuh! Meeuh!”). Curtis, another friend (there’s a story about Curtis) who I don’t think entirely understood the whole idea anyway, began to have fits and writhe on the floor. I could feel my brain melt away.

Colin was utterly confused. He did his best to help everyone, but then a janitor who had been listening out in the hall passed into a coma and nearly died of shame. Curtis knocked over a bookcase and oyster crackers fell everywhere. There was a smell of death and pine disinfectant.

After a few minutes, calm came over everyone. Colin surveyed the grim scene with confused eyes. Steam hissed from a broken vent. Asbestos fled for safer grounds. Colin left the room dazed.

It was silent, except for the sound of steam hissing (Hiss, hiss.). After a few moments, I stood up and walked out to the hallway. Colin was no where in sight. I motioned and everyone else got up, grabbed their stuff, and quietly left the room.

“At what point,” Curtis began, “did it become easier to do that,” he motioned behind him, “than to explain things to Colin?”

Dave and I answered with revered silence.