Ed Schweber (edschweb@ix.netcom.com)
Physics Teacher at The Solomon Schechter Day School, West Orange, NJ
Hi:
The following was forwarded to me by a former student. She didn't write
it but she said she enjoyed it. Makes you wonder what she learned. Maybe
you'll also enjoy it. T
The Secret of Antigravity...
Q: If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor
butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and
towering place, it will land on its feet, But what if you attach a buttered
piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the
window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will the butter splat on the
ground?
A: Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be
able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the
butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline
aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back. If the
combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this
paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get),
you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when
released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and
butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified
by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the
cat's limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud
humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several
hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the
bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will
land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right
after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and
pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship using the
aforementioned anti-gravity device.
One could power a ship by means of cats held in suspended animation
(say, about -190 degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their
backs, thus avoiding the possibility of collisions due to temperamental
felines. More importantly, how do you steer, once the cats are all held in
stasis?
I offer a modest proposal:
We all know that wearing a white shirt at an Italian restaurant is a
guaranteed way to take a trip to the Laundromat. Plaster the outside of your
ship with white shirts. Place four nozzles symmetrically around the ship,
which is, of course, saucer shaped. Fire tomato sauce out in proportion to
the directions you want to go. The ship, drawn by the shirts, will
automatically follow the sauce. If you use T-shirts, you won't go as fast as
you would by using, say, expensive dress shirts. This does not work as well
in deep gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a black
hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter force of the
anti-gravity cat/butter machine. Your only hope at that point is to jettison
enormous quantities of Tide. This will create the well-known Gravitational
Tidal Force.
AND THE RESPONSE TO THIS from a fan of the experimental scientific method:
This is a clear case of the difference between theoretical and
experimental science. Experimental science demonstrates that nature does not
"resolve" paradoxes, it simply prevents them from arising in the first
place. In this case, that prevention was apparently caused by an old
scientific axiom -- the act of performing an experiment may invalidate its
outcome. The most well known example of this is the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle from physics.
Recognizing that something similar might be going on, the suggested
experiment was performed 100 times using 100 volunteer experimenters, 100
slices of buttered bread, and 100 (uncooperative) cats. Results are
summarized below:
* 51 cases reported that the cat escaped prior to being
configured for the experiment.
* 24 cases reported that the cat delivered sufficient damage to
the bread holding apparatus that the experiment could not be
performed.
* 23 cases reported that the cat delivered sufficient damage to
the experimenter that the experiment could not be performed.
* 1 case reported that the bread revolved around the cat until the
butter side was face down on the cat's belly, at which point the
cat landed on its feet and the bread landed butter side down.
* Two cases failed to report their results, but the labs in which the
experiments were planned to take place are now rubble. In
both cases, bloody cat prints were seen leading away from the
epicenter of the devastation.
* Zero cases reported any observable antigravity.
Although results are preliminary, we believe the cat-butter paradox is
prevented from ever happening by what we have tentatively called "the
certainty principle" -- that any cat facing this experiment is certain to be
an unwilling participant.
Disclaimer: No actual cats were injured in the course of these
experiments. Alas, the same cannot be said for bread (or experimenters).
Jay Elkes
Expert in cat diagnostics and buttering bread