From the May 2000 Scientific American Magazine | 0 comments

Curiosity Rhymed the Cat ( Preview )

Alan Alda reports on readers' winning responses to his limerick challenge

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Thanks to the hundreds of people who filled our mailboxes with limericks to help me understand Schr�dinger and his famous feline (see the October 1999 issue). Many thoughtful and witty efforts didn't make it through the wrenching culling process, because the winning entry had to be (a) a genuine limerick (haiku, for instance, didn't count) and (b) something that would nudge this particular nonscientist farther along the road toward an understanding of Schr�dinger's cat.

Thanks, too, to the phalanx of grammarians who responded to my complaint that Schr�dinger's cat "would both lay there and thrive" with the reminder that chickens lay eggs, while cats lie dead. I knew that. I just find a cat that lays there a more amusing kind of cat.

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