Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics being applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event.

In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung — literally translated, entanglement Schrödinger's thought experiment was intended as a discussion of the EPR article, named after its authors: Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935. The EPR article had highlighted the strange nature of quantum superpositions. Broadly stated, a quantum superposition is the combination of all the possible states of a system (for example, the possible positions of a subatomic particle).

The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the superposition undergoes collapse into a definite state only at the exact moment of quantum measurement. Schrödinger and Einstein had exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein had pointed out that the quantum superposition of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain both exploded and unexploded components.

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