Heisenberg Uncertainty and the Photographing of Cats

[SoDesuKa]

I have seen so many pictures of cats annoyed at being photographed that some scientific principle must be involved. It might be Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: the act of measurement changes a particle's position.*

Cats don't have special expressions for the camera - What You See Is What You Get. If you think you're going to sneak up on the cat to get a "natural" expression, that will annoy the animal even more. Some photographers don't even bother. I saw a greeting card with a picture of a cute kitten looking frightened and uncomfortable. Who would send such a greeting to a friend?


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* Later modified

[DS1]

1. It's very true

I'll see the cat sleeping in an odd position, walk to the camera, take the lens cap off, turn it on, get into position, but the second I use the auto-focus it's all over.

Hmm, ultra-sonic focusing ring. I'll bet that's it. The frackers can HEAR the shot coming

[Elidor]

2. It's actually based on Schrodinger's bad reputation in the cat community

They don't know enough about quantum mechanics to actually understand his thought experiment. They foolishly believe that if you take their picture, there's a 50% chance they'll die immediately. Hence, their discomfort. A well-educated cat, with a thorough understanding of quantum mechanics, will not be alarmed, but will still give you a look that says "What the fark are you doing?" because taking photos is considered déclassé in the cat community.

[SoDesuKa]

3. Two States of Being

Mathematician Paul Budnik writes that unlike a sub-atomic particle, Schrodinger's cat has to be in one state or the other, with nothing in between:

We know that superposition of possible outcomes must exist simultaneously at a microscopic level because we can observe interference effects from these. We know (at least most of us know) that the cat in the box is dead, alive or dying and not in a smeared out state between the alternatives. When and how does the model of many microscopic possibilities resolve itself into a particular macroscopic state? When and how does the fog bank of microscopic possibilities transform itself to the blurred picture we have of a definite macroscopic state. That is the measurement problem and Schrödinger's cat is a simple and elegant explanations of that problem.

But we're talking here about cats, which are remarkable creatures. A natural state for a cat is snoozing - in which they regulate the world by sending out alpha waves. Happy with the way the planet is tilted on its axis? Don't disturb a sleeping cat.