Schrödinger's Laundry

In 1935 physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed what has come to be called "Schrödinger's cat," a thought experiment which, 91 years later, is still confounding.

His purpose in doing so was to show that the then-new science of quantum mechanics as a theory of reality was incomplete.

According to Schrödinger, one could, in principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system by making it dependent on a quantum particle that was in a superposition.

He proposed a scenario with a cat in a closed steel chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom: whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not.

According to Schrödinger, the position taken by fellow giants Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg on quantum theory's application in this instance could only be that the cat remains both dead and alive until the state has been observed.

Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of simultaneously dead and alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of Bohr and Heisenberg's interpretations of quantum theory.

But I digress.

The other day I decided to address a couple orange stains on one sleeve of my bathrobe that have been there for a while, from what I have no idea.

I tried to remove them with K2r Spot Lifter because it doesn't require that you wash the article after application.

It lightened the spots but they're still present.

Today I'm gonna go nuclear, as it were, and bring in Zout.

Zout's directions:

• Spray to completely cover the stain. Rub in.

• Wait 1-5 minutes.

• Launder in warmest water per fabric care instructions.

That seems easy enough: here goes...

... 20 minutes later...

Now, what the heck does Schrödinger have to do with laundry?

I was wondering when you'd ask....

After the warm water wash of my bathrobe was completed, I did something I'm betting very few — if any — people would (or would not) do: with my eyes shut so I couldn't peek even inadvertently, I put the bathrobe in the dryer and turned it on.

It takes two dryer cycles of my 1996 Maytag dryer (still chugging along as well as it did the day it arrived, never having required any service) to completely dry the very heavy terry cloth, so after the first cycle I cleaned the lint trap and, after shutting my eyes and sticking my hand in to confirm it was still damp (it was) I turned it on for a second spin.

Upon removing it, with my eyes open, I espied this:

As you can see, faint orange areas remain. 

But here's my point: while the bathrobe was drying — because I didn't know whether or not the spots had come out —I could indulge in the fantasy that they did come out, which made me happy as I did this and that while the drying proceeded.

If, like most if not all normal people, I'd immediately looked at the sleeve in question once I'd removed it from the washing maching only to see the spots were still there, I'd have been disheartened as I proceeded to stick the bathrobe in the dryer.

Doing it my way, I got the frisson of delight that would have come if the spots had come out, even though an hour later my optimism was crushed by reality. 

If you adopt this sort of delayed outcome approach and apply it everywhere, you life will be better. 

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?