No, it’s not what you get when you’ve been promoted lots of times! The idea of superposition claims that if you don’t know what state an object is in, it’s actually in all states at once. It’s only when you look to see that the object can be classified as being in one state or another.
A scientist called Schrodinger came up with a way to show how superposition works. Here's Schrödinger's theoretical (and really nasty!) experiment: You put a living cat into a box, along with some poison and a device to trigger the release of the poison. However, you can’t know when, or even if, the poison is released and the cat killed.
Since you don’t know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in what’s known as a superposition of states. The cat only becomes dead or alive when you open the box and look. If you can wrap your head around this one, you’re already well on your way to becoming a quantum physicist!
