(Although Schrodinger meant this as a counter-argument to Einstein’s proposition of superposition of quantum states – he wanted to demonstrate the absurdity of the proposition – it has caught on in popular culture as a thought experiment of the observer effect.) The observation removes the cat from a state of superposition and commits it to just one. Only by observing it does the cat shift permanently to one of the two states. Until the box opens, the cat exists in a state of superposition (when half of two states each occur at the same time)-that is, the cat is both alive and dead.

In his best-known thought experiment, Schrödinger asked us to imagine a cat placed in a box with a radioactive atom that might or might not kill it in an hour.

In physics, Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat highlights the power of observation. The observer effect pops up in many scientific fields. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.” The observer effect in science People are invariably affected by observation. So, before you judge someone’s behavior, it’s worth asking if they are changing because you are looking at them, or if their behavior is natural. But both things and people can change under observation. The moon continues to orbit whether we have a telescope pointed at it or not. Are you ever on your best behavior when you’re alone in your house? To get better at understanding other people, we need to consider the observer effect: observing things changes them, and some phenomena only exist when observed. But the truth is, we all change how we act when we expect to be seen. We see what they are doing as representative of their whole life. We often forget to factor in the distortion of observation when we evaluate someone’s behavior. Here’s how the observer effect distorts our world and how we can get a more accurate picture. The act of looking at something changes it – an effect that holds true for people, animals, even atoms.

What is the actor observer bias