I have only recently become familiar with this concept, so please forgive me if my question seems daft. Schrödinger wrote "Until the box is opened at the end of the hour, we will not know what has happened. According to quantum law then, the cat is both dead and alive, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of that cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes either dead or alive.
It's the "both dead AND alive" bit that I cannot grasp. Why not "dead OR alive" because at that stage, we still don't know, so the answer has to be OR, as there are two possibilities.
To take another example, before a tin of beans it opened, it will either contain beans, OR it won't. It can't be full and empty at the same time. So why is it necessary to use this play on words?