Schrödinger's Sock: A Quantum Laundry Room Game for the Whole Family

I'm sure you've been in this situation: there's a sock on the laundry-room floor and there are two possibilities:

1) The sock fell out of the dryer when you were unloading.

2) The sock fell out of the laundry basket as you were putting dirty clothes into the washer.

If it fell from the dryer, it's clean. If it fell from the laundry basket, it's dirty. If you've got kids who play sports, it's filthy reeking dirty.

The sock is lying there, prone and lifeless, in one state or the other.

You may have heard of the infamous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. If you haven't, you can read Wikipedia's short summary. I included it below.

The basic idea is that you can set up a quantum scenario where something is in a superposition-- in two states at once-- until an observer breaks the spell and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.

Schrödinger's Cat Thought Experiment

Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. 

Schrödinger's Sock Experiment (This Shit is Real)

The only way to collapse the superposition of the sock is to pick it up and smell it. The problem is that fifty percent of the time, it's going to smell really bad. But that's the cost of living in a universe dictated by quantum probability.

I've reenacted yesterday's version of the sock experiment.  I got my son to take the photos--though at first, he balked, calling this "the stupidest idea of all time." He then saw the title of the post, "Schrödinger's Sock," and remarked, "That's so cliché . . . everyone knows about "Schrödinger's Cat. It's not that funny."

I think my title is genius, but he's about to turn 16 and doesn't understand how awesome I am. And if you search up "Schrödinger's Sock" on Google, you get absolute crap. Stupid shit about disappearing socks and even stupider shit about Christmas presents. This is the only Schrödinger's Sock post that contains an accurate parallel analogy to Schrödinger's thought experiment. Someday soon my son will appreciate this. Or not.

Anyway, I rolled the quantum dice. I smelled the sock. Unfortunately, I crapped out. It was a dirty sweaty sock full of teen spirit.

Into the wash with it.

A lesser man wouldn't bother to collapse the superposition of the sock. A lesser man would just toss it into the wash without smelling. "Better safe than sorry," this lesser man would say. But the universe would be a less interesting place for it. It's more interesting to collapse the superposition and ascertain the truth, even if it means smelling a gross sock or seeing a dead cat. It's all part of dealing existentially with a universe built from chaos, probability, and reality TV.