Buttered cat paradox

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The buttered cat paradox is a paradox based on the tongue-in-cheek combination of two bits of folk wisdom:

The paradox arises when one considers what would happen if one attached a piece of buttered toast (butter side up) to the back of a cat, then dropped the cat from a height.

Contents

[edit] Thought experiments

While the paradox originated as a tongue-in-cheek combination of two bits of folk advice, it ended up creating some interesting thought experiments.

Some people jokingly maintain that the experiment will produce an anti-gravity effect. They propose that as the cat falls towards the ground, it will slow down and start to rotate, eventually reaching a steady state of hovering a short distance from the ground while rotating at high speed as both the buttered side of the toast and the cat’s feet attempt to land on the ground.[1] This, however, would require the energy that keeps them rotating and hovering to come from the gravitational energy expended in the system's fall, otherwise it would violate the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Another response is that the cat will land on its feet, and immediately roll over on its back. This, however, means that the cat's feet were stronger than the toast's buttered side insofar as its attraction to the ground, but once on the ground the buttered toast's attraction overpowered the cat's feet. This would give rise to another question: which is stronger, the cat's movement to land on its feet or the toast's butter-side attraction to the ground? The reverse could also be true – the toast lands first buttered side down, and then the cat rolls onto its feet. (However, both scenarios would require the assumption that the cat did not suffer a major injury upon landing, either in the legs or the back, either of which would result in protests from animal rights groups.)

[edit] In popular culture

In June 2003, Kimberly Miner won a Student Academy Award for her film Perpetual Motion.[2] Miner based her film on a paper written by a high-school friend that explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea.[3][4]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ UoWaikato newsletter
  2. ^ Available at http://unreal.rit.edu/Kim_Miner/Perpetual_Motion.ram
  3. ^ University of Leeds. Perpetual Motion.
  4. ^ Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2003

[edit] External links

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