Title: Here's How Schrodinger's Cat Works
Headings: Understanding the "Schrodinger's Cat" Thought Experiment
Understanding the "Schrodinger's Cat" Thought Experiment
Quantum Indeterminancy
On to the Cat
Interpretations of Schrodinger's Cat

Content: In this analogy, really, the act of measurement takes place by the Geiger counter. There are scores of interactions along the chain of events—it is impossible to isolate the cat or the separate portions of the system so that it is truly quantum mechanical in nature. By the time the cat itself enters the equation, the measurement has already been made ... a thousand times over, measurements have been made—by the atoms of the Geiger counter, the vial-breaking apparatus, the vial, the poison gas, and the cat itself. Even the atoms of the box are making "measurements" when you consider that if the cat falls over dead, it will come in contact with different atoms than if it paces anxiously around the box. Whether or not the scientist opens the box is irrelevant, the cat is either alive or dead, not a superposition of the two states. Still, in some strict views of the Copenhagen interpretation, it is actually an observation by a conscious entity which is required. This strict form of the interpretation is generally the minority view among physicists today, although there remains some intriguing argument that the collapse of the quantum wavefunctions may be linked to consciousness. ( For a more thorough discussion of the role of consciousness in quantum physics, I suggest Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum & Fred Kuttner.) Still another interpretation is the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which proposes that the situation actually branches off into many worlds.