2017 School Magazine

A POEM TO SCHRÖDINGER, FROM HIS CAT

Schrödinger. Erwin Schrödinger. I thought we were eternal, that our love would never die, but, in your words not mine.

The annoying squirrel, the neighbour’s yappy dog, the neighbour himself, could have sufficed but no, you chose me, a poor cat, a cat who loved you.

Our love seems to be, both dead and alive. Simultaneously.

You put your ‘thought experiment’, (I thought it had very little thought) before me. You traded my love, to question quantum superposition. You didn’t need to do it, you knew it was absurd The Copenhagen interpretation, ‘must have been flawed’ I recall you saying,

The annoying yappy dog next door, Told me it was a show of affection, but I saw the truth, you didn’t return my feelings,

you never did, I was but a cat. Another group of atoms, to be observed, and experimented on. A nameless feline, known only as: Schrödinger’s cat.

quantum superposition ‘could never be applied’ to sizeable object, like a cat.

Now our love has been observed, Its superposition collapsed And the final state of our love? Dead. Dead and buried. Dead, buried and never to return. You became renowned, For work in quantum mechanics I ran away. As far away as I could get, to escape your philosophical box. You were immortalized, as a crater on the moon, but how appropriate that the crater should be located on the dark side.

Why did you choose me? Why did you put me in a box? With a radioactive substance, and a flask of poison? Any respectably sized creature, which was alive, ideally when they were put, against their will, into a woefully confining box, could have been the subject

to your cruel, heartless test.

SARAH HURLEY (11E)

128 | CREATIONS | BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 2017