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Wednesday 6 January 2021

Williamson’s cat



Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, has devised an ingenious scheme to cope with the problems posed by the coronavirus debacle and a perfectly natural desire to keep schools open. His scheme is based on Schrödinger's cat. From Wikipedia

In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates an apparent paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.

Taking this idea just a little further, Mr Williamson’s plan is that school kids can be both present and absent from school at the same time as long as nobody triggers the present/absent superposition by actually checking.

Brilliant, so let us hear no more about Mr Williamson’s general uselessness here.

5 comments:

microdave said...

On that basis I see no reason why I can't be locked up at home, and enjoying a day out at the same time...

Sam Vega said...

Unfortunately, I had to destroy the premise of the experiment by checking. I can confirm that my children are at home; that one of them has received a small amount of work to do, via email; that the work set contains spelling and grammatical errors; and that my wife's status as a "key worker" means that their schools would accept them on the premises, but they would be doing the same work via email.

I've no idea where the teachers are.

I think we might all be Schrodinger's guinea pigs.

wiggiatlarge said...

The definition of key worker is being stretched, of course all are key workers especially those in the private sector who make it possible through taxes for the 'key worker' public sector to exist, I read a case yesterday where a couple are denied education at school for their children as neither qualify as key workers yet a next door neighbours kids do despite the husband being out of work and the wife working in a sandwich factory, nothing against sandwich factories but if you make your own sandwiches at home does that qualify you?
Asking for a friend.......................

The Jannie said...

Do you still count as a key worker if you work for an organisation whose "management"- say the Prison Service for instance - don't know if its arse is punched or bored and put their staff at risk every day? Asking for a friend who works for an organisation which bangs up crims . . .

A K Haart said...

microdave - neither do I as long as some prodnose doesn't collapse the superposition.

Sam - sounds much the same as Grandson's online school work - very limited. We have seen spelling and grammatical errors from schools too. Doesn't build confidence.

Wiggia - our impression is that some schools invent their won definition of key workers and the rules which apply. As if they don't actually read the guidelines but rely on office gossip instead.

Jannie - I certainly hope prison staff are key workers.