Google Doodle Honors Physicist Erwin Schrödinger And His Quantum Cat
Google Doodle on August 12, 2013 Google The Nobel prize-winning scientist would have been 126 today. Erwin Schrödinger, creator of the famous thought experiment in which a cat in a box is simultaneously dead and alive, was born August 12, 1886, in Vienna, Austria. Today, Google celebrates the quantum physicist with a Doodle showing two kitty cats in opposite states of viability. In 1933, Schrödinger won the Nobel prize in physics for Schrödinger's equation, which describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes with time. His theoretical research has led to many fascinating scientific breakthroughs (like quantum teleportation!) One version of the Schrödinger's Cat paradox, which is often used as a way to think about quantum mechanics, goes like this: A cat is in a sealed box with a flask of poison and a radioactive substance. If a single atom of the substance decays, the flask shatters and the cat...