Dear Cecil:

Cecil, you're my final hope, of finding out the true Straight Dope

For I have been reading of Schroedinger's cat, but none of my cats are at all like that.

This unusual animal (so it is said), is simultaneously live and dead!

What I don't understand is just why he Can't be, one or other unquestionably.

My future now hangs in between eigenstates. In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.

If you understand Cecil then show me the way, and rescue my psyche from quantum decay.

But if this queer thing has perplexed even you, then I will and won't see you in Schroedinger's zoo.

--Randy F., Chicago

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Dear Randy:

Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics! Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!

(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)

Win saw that the theory which Newton invented, by Einstein's discov'ries had  badly been dented.

What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic.  No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.

Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles, are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.

If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!

No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judge, where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."

Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck, the comforting linkage of cause and effect.

Even Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried, to tell him what quantum mechanics implied.

Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat, And inside a tube we have put that cat at--

Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos, A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes

(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em, One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom

Or atom--whatever--but when it emits, a trigger device blasts the vial into bits

Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime are 50 to 50 per hour each time.

The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is Our pussy now dead--or is he at play?

Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.

Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke), Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.

To some this may seem a ridiculous split, But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough shit!"

We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho', there's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.

Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve. The act of observing disturbs the observed--

Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing To see if a particle's moving or resting

Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor! We can know probability—but certainty, never.'

The effect of this notion? I very much fear 'Twill make doubtful all things, that were formerly clear.

Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports, "We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'

So saith Herr Erwin. But said Albert, "You're nuts. God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.

I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.

Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends, Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.

Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint: It’s ten-to-one he's in heaven—ten to one that he ain't."

--CECIL ADAMS