Buttered Cat Paradox

[rac]

The buttered cat paradox is a joke paradox based on the tongue-in-cheek combination of two adages:

* Cats always land on their feet.
* Buttered toast always lands buttered side down.

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 large height … 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. This, however, would require the energy that keeps them rotating to come from the gravitational energy expended in the system’s fall; otherwise it would violate the Law of Conservation of Energy.

(And natch, people with time on their hands have tested the proposition for all to see on YouTube; for example, here and here.)

From the NYT Cartoons/Humor page...

[Phantom5588]

That's all well and good in theory, but the cat has something that the toast doesn't have...sentience. Which means that the cat may try to land on its feet whereas the toast really has no preference which side it lands on.

Besides, how do you intend to attach the buttery toast to the cat without risking life and limb?

[Pescados666]

You'd need a lot of butter on that toast. If you balanced them out equally, you should have a 25:25:25:25 ratio of ways it will land.

[Pescados666]

That's all well and good in theory, but the cat has something that the toast doesn't have...sentience. Which means that the cat may try to land on its feet whereas the toast really has no preference which side it lands on.

Besides, how do you intend to attach the buttery toast to the cat without risking life and limb?

What if the cat isn't alive...? Does it still land on it's feet then?

[Phantom5588]

What if the cat isn't alive...? Does it still land on it's feet then?

That would be a biased experiment with a defective control group. The question wasn't what happens with a dead cat, just as the question was not what would happen with unbuttered toast.

[Pescados666]

That would be a biased experiment with a defective control group. The question wasn't what happens with a dead cat, just as the question was not what would happen with unbuttered toast.

But it did not say that the cat had to be alive either. Nor did it specify the type of cat. A tabby may be ready to land on it's feet before a siamese cat will. That could cause problems with the amount of butter that is needed to counter act the cat.

[Phantom5588]

Nor did it specify the type of cat.

Or for that matter the type of toast...

[Pescados666]

Nor did it specify the type of cat.

Or for that matter the type of toast...

Exactly. The only thing we know of is that it has to be butter, not I can't beleive it's not butter. But what about the variances in different types of butter? Plus all slices of bread arn't the same so they won't be constant either.

[seven6ty]

http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia...oast_swirl.gif

[Rabid Monk]

Couldn't you make a far more compact anti-gravity drive by simply buttering two sides of the toast?

Or, altenratively, attaching two cats back-to-back?

[Redblade]

Put the buttered-toast cat in a big box with automated dropping mechanism. Before the observer actually opens the box to check on the cat's condition, it exists in a potential state of being simultaneously both buttered-up and buttered-down.

[Inquartata]

Put the buttered-toast cat in a big box with automated dropping mechanism. Before the observer actually opens the box to check on the cat's condition, it exists in a potential state of being simultaneously both buttered-up and buttered-down.

Schrodinger's toast?

[Tomas N]

My physics teacher in high school had a wonderful story he told us of how he determined exactly why cats always land on their feet. (This was well before the days when you could just google the question.) He started by dropping his cat from a height of four or five feet. By careful observation, he came up with the hypothesis that the cat's tail is the critical tool in causing it to land on its feet. To test this theory, he tied the cat's tail to its body and dropped it again from a height of four or five feet. This time the cat landed on its head. It never trusted him again.

Tomas

[Redblade]

Schrodinger's toast?

Yep. His pet cat was always underfoot.