- Apr 14, 2001
- 57,118
- 18,646
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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
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
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