Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger coined the term "Verschränkung" (entanglement) in
Introduction to quantum mechanics by a small amount, where only one line was expected. Pauli formulated his "exclusion principle", stating that "There cannot exist an atom in such a quantum state that two electrons within [it] have the same set of quantum numbers." A year later, [[George Eugene Uhlenbeck|Uhlenbeck]] and [[Samuel Goudsmit|Goudsmit]] identified Pauli's new degree of freedom with the property called [[spin (physics)|spin]] whose effects were observed in the Stern–Gerlach experiment. Bohr's model of the atom was essentially a planetary one, with the electrons orbiting around the nuclear "sun." However, the uncertainty principle states that an electron cannot simultaneously have an exact location