Son

Out of context: Reply #6

  • Started
  • Last post
  • 14 Responses
  • Milan0

    One can even construct quite burlesque cases. A cat is shut
    up in a steel container, together with the following
    diabolical apparatus (which one must keep out of the direct
    clutches of the cat): In a Geiger tube [radiation detector]
    there is a tiny mass of radioactive substance, so little
    that in the course of an hour perhaps one atom of it
    disintegrates, but also with equal probability not even one;
    if it does happen, the counter [detector] responds and ...
    activates a hammer that shatters a little flask of prussic
    acid [filling the chamber with poison gas]. If one has left
    this entire system to itself for an hour, then one will say
    to himself that the cat is still living, if in that time no
    atom has disintegrated. The first atomic disintegration
    would have poisoned it.

View thread