Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked his students to provide him with explanations whenever the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment differed from those of their prior, imaginary experiment. Much later, Ernst Mach used the term Gedankenexperiment in a different way, to denote exclusively the imaginary conduct of a real experiment that would be subsequently performed as a real physical experiment by his students.
Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term Gedankenversuch in 1820. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the German term Gedankenexperiment (lit.
It illustrates the counterintuitive implications of Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation when applied to everyday objects.Ī thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. Schrödinger's cat (1935) presents a cat that is in a superposition of alive and dead states, depending on a random quantum event.
