On Jun 4, 2004, at 2:56, W & N Lafferty wrote:
All I can remember is that a cat "always falls on 4 legs", ie lands safely. In
extensio, that would mean that a cat never dies at all <g>
and a piece of buttered bread always lands butter side down.
So if you strap a piece of bread, buttered side up, on a cat's back, and drop the cat from a height, then both the cat's feet and the buttered side of the bread will want to land first and hey presto, perpetual motion!
I think I'll spend the rest of the evening meditating... Are you a genius? Am I a nut, because I find the idea most amusing? Flip, flop, flip, flop... How big would the bread piece need to be to balance the cat and keep the flip-flopping going? Would it be a matter of weight, or of surface? And, how soon after being dropped (from what height?) would the flip-flop "click in"?
Weronika, perhaps some of your buddies at CalTech might want to do an in-depth study of the physics (and the metaphysics) of the problem. Especially those in search of a "meaty" subject for a thesis... I'm also forwarding this message to all the sci people I know; this is beyond *my* two brain cells, but...
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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