Schrödinger's Cat: A Simple Explanation of a Complex Thought Experiment
When someone mentions "Schrödinger's Cat," most people imagine a cat that is both alive and dead at the same time. This concept originated in 1935 when Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed a famous thought experiment to explain the principles of quantum mechanics.

The Essence of the Experiment Schrödinger imagined a scenario where a cat is locked in a box with a vial of poison that could be triggered by the decay of a radioactive atom. According to quantum mechanics, the atom can exist in two states—decayed and not decayed—simultaneously, as long as it isn't observed. This means that the cat, until the box is opened, is in a superposition: both alive and dead at the same time.

Why Does It Matter? The experiment was designed to illustrate the strange behavior of quantum particles. In the real world, objects can't exist in two states at once, but on the quantum level, things are far less predictable. The idea of superposition is at the core of modern technologies like quantum computers.