ANN: We know cats are capable of landing on their feet.
But a teacher in Taiwan is learning the hard way that holding a cat over your head and then suddenly dropping it onto a hard floor, in front of dozens of students, may not be such a smart thing to do.
The teacher – identified in Taiwan news reports as Mr Lee Feng – was trying to demonstrate a principle in physics known as the “conservation of angular momentum”.
That principle says it is impossible for an object that is not spinning to suddenly rotate without external influence.
In other words, cats shouldn’t be landing on their feet if they aren’t pushing off anything, say a wall or the hands of the person dropping them. Yet, they do.
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We have ample evidence that Laifu the cat didn’t mind all that much.
Otherwise Mr. Lee would have been bleeding heavily.
Seriously, though, the abusive thing I see is the cat being picked up upside down by its legs. I think that’s why Laifu was hissing.
In any case, I’m glad he didn’t get a dead cat bounce.
In college the Physics class/lab was on the second floor.
First day the prof walked in with a brief case and a bowling ball.
Turns, looks at the class and drops the bowling ball, then said “Welcome to Physics”
It probably woke up a few on the first floor too!
“come out with far less injuries than those who fall from less than six storeys high.”
Is there a grant/funding to try this, with members of congress?
It would be a great PPV event.
https://i.imgflip.com/2qdty.jpg
I have read that the most dangerous height a cat can fall from is around 7 stories – that they are more likely to survive, with less injury, even from, say, an airplane. It has to do with their relaxation, and hitting terminal velocity, which is closer to flying squirrel than to crashing human.
And everywhere I read that, they make a point of noting that the data comes from *accidental* falls, not planned experiments. 🙂
Just be happy he wasn’t testing the 9 lives theory.
Now do it for Xi.
*SPLAT*
The “Smarter Every Day” YouTube channel did an excellent demo and study on cat drops. That channel is full of interesting experiments and demos. Well worth your time.
A couple years ago the big story of the day was a cat (or coon? can’t remember) that climbed up the side of building 6 or 8 floors, fell and ran away.
Cherrybark, I remember a PBS show on cats and dogs and they did the same with slow motion and anatomical renderings and nobody said a damn thing.
I’m left to wonder if perhaps this cat was gay or democrat which is usually the reason for uproar.
The car was trans
They coulda called it “Cat Droppings” and had people scratching their heads…
Yes, but was this anything related to Schrödinger’s cat
(see directly above)
Now if he had put the cat in a box…
Dumb Bunnies – it can be shown (through Quantum Mechanics, of course) that, in reality, Schrödinger both DID and DID NOT have a cat that both died and lived, depending on an observer who both DID and DID NOT exist who both opened and didn’t open the cat’s box that, also, both DID and DID NOT exist!
QED
Give the little fella a break, would ya? He was just trying to tenderize his dinner.