Can anyone explain the Schrödinger's cat paradox to me?

Question

This isn't a homework assignment or anything to do with school, I am just interested. Thanks!

Answer 1

The idea is that you put a cat in a box with a radioactive isotope that has a 50 percent chance of decaying and killing the cat while it's in the box (just a thought experiment, not something you'd actually do).

So assuming the cat makes no noise either way and there are no holes in the box, after the period of time during which the isotope had a 50 percent change of decaying, the cat is either alive or dead - but you won't know until you look.

We say that the cat is in a 'supposition' state, both alive AND dead, until you actually open the box and look (or make a measurement).  Checking is called 'collapsing the wavefunction' and forcing the cat into one of the states, either alive or dead - but until you checked, it was both one and the other.

The wavefunction in this case would look like:

Psi = 1/sqrt(2) (alive) + 1/sqrt(2) (dead).